Phillip leaned into the bathroom mirror and studied his own image staring back at him. Once more he combed his hair forward, furrowed straight as a garden row, and raked a well-oiled part across the right side of his head. Finally he stepped back, satisfied at last. Couldn’t have done much better if he’d used a straight edge. But such opportunities seldom came his way, and he was determined that this time everything would be just so.

The Southerlands were singing at church tonight. Phillip had listened to them on the AM radio. He’d saved his yard mowing money and bought their record albums. He and his mother had sung along to their harmonies while they washed the dinner dishes. He’d seen them on television a hundred times, but tonight the Southerlands would be singing at Stoney Point.

“You coming out, or am I coming in?” Donna pulled hard on the metal knob, then turned her attention to pounding on the doorframe. “Huh? I hate to think what you’re doing in there. You don’t come out now, I’m telling Mom.”

Phillip swung the door open and Donna made a gagging noise. “Shoo, boy,” she said, her nose all scrunched up, “you smell like you took a bath in Daddy’s Old Spice. Don’t tell me you got a date with a girl?”

“Please leave me alone,” Phillip said, pressing past his sister. “I’m just going to the church.”

“Well, say a prayer for me,” Donna squawked. “I’m going down to the lake with James Michael Stanley, so Lord knows I’ll need it.”

Phillip went into his bedroom and closed the door. He picked up the white dress shirt he’d laid across the back of the chair and slipped his arms into the sleeves. Phillip worried about his sister. Donna didn’t have any use for church. Religion was just one big joke to her. She’d rather run around with boys and listen to rock-and-roll music. He was pretty sure she smoked cigarettes. Phillip buttoned his shirt, stepped into his loafers, and walked back down the hall.

“Well, now. Don’t you look nice.” Mama looked up and smiled, pushing her curl back behind her ear. She slid the bills to one side and scooted her chair away from the kitchen table. She stepped across the room and placed both hands on Phillip’s shoulders, holding him back and inspecting him at arm’s length. “You look mighty grown up, son. I’m proud of the way you turned out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Phillip said, toeing the designs on the linoleum. “I’m pretty excited about tonight. I just wish you were coming with me.”

“Don’t you worry yourself about that,” his mother said. “I just want you to have a big time. Now come on in here and help me with your daddy before you go.”

Phillip’s daddy sat in the living room looking at the television set, his withered arms and legs tucked neatly beneath a crocheted blanket, even as his life was neatly contained within the five rooms of his own house. All the work was done by someone else now, by Phillip’s mother, by Phillip. Donna had dim memories of a stronger man, but this atrophied figure was the only father Phillip had ever known.

“Jackie, Phillip’s going to the church tonight,” said Phillip’s mother. “He’s going to see the Singing Southerlands. Isn’t that something?”

Phillip’s father raised his eyes from the screen, his face colored by the television’s yellows and blues and greens. He rarely felt the urge to speak, and this news prompted only a slight nod. The actors on the sitcom laughed as Phillip wheeled his father from the living room to the bathroom to the bedroom. They were still laughing as he walked out the front door and down the road toward Stoney Point.

Phillip hiked the familiar mile, his gait quickening when he rounded the last curve before the church. Beyond bare limbs of redbud and sassafras, the Southerlands’ tour bus glinted and winked like a silver bullet. As he approached the clearing the bus shone in the final rays of autumn sunlight, and Phillip could make out their name in baby blue script, the letters two feet high: The Singing Southerlands.

A large crowd had already gathered, their cars filling the parking lot with license plates from neighboring counties, neighboring states. A line spilled out the front door, and Phillip hoped he could find a proper seat inside the church. He took his place in line and fixed his thoughts on the insistent tones of organ music penetrating the cool night air. The show was about to begin.

No sooner had Phillip taken his seat, four rows back from the front, than the pastor signaled for the congregation to rise up.

“Brothers and sisters,” he said, the bright spotlight shining down on his face. “Friends, tonight we welcome a very special family to this church.” Several people said, “Amen,” and “Praise the Lord.” Someone even let out a sharp whistle. “Ladies and gentlemen, they are here to minister to us, even as they give praise to our Heavenly Father. Now I just pray this night will be a blessing to each and every soul that’s gathered here. So please join me in making welcome to Stoney Point Church the Singing Southerlands!”

The house lights dimmed and Brother Ray Southerland bounded on stage, guitar slung low across his shoulder. The sequins on his jacket sparkled silver, pink, and purple. He brushed his pick across the strings of his guitar and Sister Jean danced out to meet him. Her hair was wigged up high, her face made up with cosmetics, and Phillip thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. She was more beautiful than Crystal Gayle. More beautiful than Barbara Mandrell. More beautiful than his mother.

The couple met center stage, standing on either side of a single microphone. They traded vocals, Sister Jean’s alto carrying Brother Ray’s clear tenor on the verses, then switching to lead while his baritone boomed out on the chorus. They sang all Phillip’s favorites, “Precious Lord” and “Hallelujah City” and “Glory Parade”. Brother Ray pounded out Spirit-filled rhythms on his acoustic guitar, occasionally slipping his fingers up the neck to pluck out a simple melody line. Sister Jean clapped her hands and smiled and the church clapped along.

But the room grew quiet when Brother Ray laid down his guitar and moved to the piano. Sister Jean took the microphone from its stand and walked to the front of the stage, the sanctuary shrouded in darkness except for the ray of light that illuminated her face. She lifted her eyes heavenward and began to sing “Ready for the Rapture”:

Lord, I know I’ve stumbled

And I know I still stray

But I’m ready for the rapture, Jesus,

Won’t you hear me when I pray

Won’t you save my soul today

Sister Jean sang with her eyes closed, her voice filled with rich vibrato, her lips trembling against the lyric. Brother Ray’s hands lit on the keyboard like doves, closing the song with a flourish as the lights went out completely. When they came on again, the Southerlands were gone.

After the encore and the offering, the Singing Southerlands moved to metal folding chairs behind a long table. The table was draped with a cloth, and on it were records and tapes and black and white publicity stills. Phillip wanted to meet them, and he waited in the shadows of the foyer until most of the other people were finished buying records, snapping photographs, and asking for autographs. When he finally approached their table, Sister Jean stood and took both Phillip’s hands in her own. Her skin was soft and moist and warm, and he liked the feel of holding a woman’s hand.

“Hi, there,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Phillip,” said Phillip.

“Oh, honey,” Sister Jean smiled, “you got a Bible name.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Phillip said, staring at the buttons on his shirt.

“Well, ain’t you going to buy any records?” Sister Jean asked.

“No, ma’am,” Phillip told her. “I’ve already got all your records. I even got three issues of the Singing News with you on the cover. You and Brother Ray.”

“My, my, my,” said Sister Jean. “You hear that, Ray? Phillip here’s got all our records and three issues of the Singing News. Honey, I sure wish you’d have brought them tonight so we could have signed them for you.”

Phillip wished so, too, but they were in a cardboard box underneath his bed.

“Tell you what,” said Sister Jean, still smiling. “We done so good here tonight that we’re going to stay and sing again tomorrow. We don’t have to go nowhere, we just sleep right out there on our bus. You come back tomorrow night and we’ll sign everything you’ve got.”

Phillip realized that Sister Jean was still holding both his hands, and he wondered if Brother Ray cared, sitting right there on his metal folding chair. He nodded his head, first toward Sister Jean, then toward Brother Ray. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you both. I sure do like your singing.” Then he walked out the door, across the parking lot, and down the road toward home.

Everyone was asleep when Phillip got back to his house. Everyone except Donna, who was probably out smoking cigarettes with James Michael Stanley. Phillip eased the storm door back against the jamb, mindful of disturbing the night sounds of cricket and jar fly and frog. He stepped out of his shoes and walked down the hallway in his sock feet, then he knelt by his bedside and pulled out the cardboard box. He rummaged around with a flashlight and counted out eight record albums and three issues of the Singing News. Phillip tucked them under his arm, put his shoes back on, opened his bedroom window, and lowered himself back into the night.

The gravel crunched beneath his feet as Phillip walked across the church parking lot. A pale light shone in the front window of the bus, and Phillip allowed that someone inside was still awake. He felt his pulse in his knees and elbows as he balled up his fist and tapped on the door.

“Hey, Phil.” It was a woman’s voice. “Come on in, Phil. Door’s open, Phil.”

Sister Jean sat alone at a small table, legs crossed left over right, one slipper dangling precariously from her painted toes. She wore a flowing sheer robe, and the night breeze stirred the curtain at an open window behind her. The light of a single dim bulb surrounded her head like a halo, and Phillip saw that dark pools of mascara had welled up from the corners of her eyes and smeared across her rouged cheekbones. Sister Jean drank from a kitchen glass where three melting ice cubes floated atop some dark, clear liquid.

“Hello, Phil,” she said, speaking slowly, struggling to enunciate her words. “I knew you’d come back to me, Phil. I was hoping you would come back.”

Phillip laid his stack of records on the table. To his left was a small kitchenette. There was a sink and an oven and a three-burner stove. A little refrigerator was tucked away below the countertop. At the rear of the bus a gray curtain was stretched tight across a metal rod. Phillip could see the church silhouetted through the windshield of the bus. He pulled out a chair and sat down across from Sister Jean.

“Where’s Brother Ray?” he asked.

“Where’s Brother Ray? Where is Brother Ray? He’s passed out on pills,” she said, raising her glass toward Phillip and rattling the cubes of ice. “He’s passed out on pills, and I’m taking me a whiskey trip.”

The breeze no longer blew, and in its absence the air on the bus grew still. Phillip’s neck felt bound, constricted by his collar’s starchy tightness, and he could feel the heat roiling up inside his shirt. Phillip squinted into the dark bowels of the bus, wondering what strange sights lay beyond the gray curtain. Then he looked back at Sister Jean. “I want to go home,” Phillip said.

“No you don’t,” said Sister Jean. “If you wanted to go home you wouldn’t of set down in that chair. If you wanted to go home you wouldn’t of come here in the first place. No, Phil, I don’t believe you want to go home.”

“I just wanted you to autograph my records,” he said.

“Well, here,” said Sister Jean raking the stack toward her. She took a felt tipped marker and signed her name on all the record albums and on the three issues of the Singing News. “There,” she said. “How’s that?”

“Thank you,” he said. “You’re my favorite singer.” Then he stood, slid his chair back under the table, gathered his belongings, and turned to go.

“Phillip.”

Phillip stopped. He turned once more and looked at Sister Jean. There was a familiar longing in her eyes. He had seen it in his mother, in his father, in his sister, in himself. He knew well the look of loneliness, though he did not know it had a name.

“Come here, baby.” Sister Jean’s voice was barely a whisper. She uncrossed her legs. “Come to mama.”

The next night, Phillip sat four rows from the front when the Singing Southerlands took the stage. He stomped and clapped and shouted while they holy rolled. When Brother Ray moved to the piano and the crowd grew still and the spotlight pierced the darkness and Sister Jean sang “Ready for the Rapture,” Phillip could hear his own heart beating above the music. And as Brother Ray’s fingers touched the keyboard like the feathers of a dove, and Sister Jean looked down at Phillip with unblinking eyes, he reached out in the shadows and took his mother’s hand.