Getting to put on my frilly, thin dresses and my best bloomers and two starched underskirts and new white ribbed stockings was fun. But having to squeeze my feet into shoes and then sit still on a church bench two times a day was awful. Everybody in Drake Eye Springs dressed up in Sunday clothes and came to the meeting; that is, everybody except the Baileys and the Lawsons. Mama said Mister Wes Bailey and Miss Lida Belle were sure making a mistake, not bringing Addie Mae and their three boys. Everybody had known beforehand that Ward Lawson wouldn't darken the church door or hitch up a wagon so Miss Ophelia, their young'uns, and Miss Dink could attend services. During the second week of the meeting, we were late getting off to church one night because, while Mama and Papa were getting dressed, they whispered so long about Mister Ward. Papa was real bothered about something Mister Ward might do. And Mama kept saying, "Jodie, please don't you do anything drastic! You'd just make bad matters a heap worse." Papa slipped on his good shirt and told her, "What gets my goat is that he's started telling all over the settlement that I didn't fight him fair and square. Says I yelled for the baby to pour that coal oil on him. That makes me so mad I could kill him! To hear him tell it, I started the fight. He's hell-bent on getting revenge!" "Shh, Jodie, don't forget who's sitting right behind you, buttoning up her shoes." That was me. And I was having a hard time with my shoes. "Mama, can I go barefooted tonight? Just one time?" "Not to Protracted Meeting!" So I wore my squeezing shoes again. Mama said I could get a lot out of the meeting if I'd only listen to what was going on. I tried listening, but I didn't get a thing. I found out, though, that at the night services, when Brother Milligan finally got through preaching and stepped down in front of the pulpit and said, "The doors of this church are now open," it didn't mean we could all walk out the door and go home! It meant the time had come for the bad sinners to go to the mourners' bench with their heads hanging down. Everybody else would stand up and sing the song about "Poor sinner, harden not your heart … and close thine eyes against the Light." We'd sing it over and over for them—four or five times. Some nights half a dozen would go up the aisle and shake the preacher's hand. He'd ask them if they believed in Jesus and wanted to be baptized and join the church, and each one would nod his head. They would then sit down on the bench, and everybody except me would be glad and happy. While we sang another song, the grownups who already belonged to the church would line up and shake hands with the sinners. That, the preacher said, was "giving the right hand of Christian fellowship." Other nights nobody would even look toward the mourners' bench, no matter how loud the preacher called them to come or how long we sang. Those nights we got to go home early, and that made me glad and happy.