<TITLE>24. Par 233-246</TITLE>L-233   And I went back home, and I said, "You know, honey, you women shop all over town to find bargains." You know how you like to crow. And I said, "But here, look here, I bought two pair for the price that you buy one pair with. See?" I said, "Oh, that that's my personal ability." See, I said--I said, "You know, Thelma sold me these." I said, "She might have let me have them at half price."
She said, "Did you get chiffon?"

L-234 I said, "Yes, ma'am." It all sounded the same to me, I didn't know there was any difference.

L-235   And she told me, she said, "Billy." I thought strange when she got to Fort Wayne, she had to get another pair of stockings. She said, "I give them to your mother," said, "they're for older women." Said, "I'm sorry I did that."
And I said, "Oh, that's all right, honey."

L-236 And she said, "Now, don't--don't live single." And she said... She didn't know that what was fixing to happen in a few hours from then. And I held her darling hands while the Angels of God packed her away.

L-237   I went home. I didn't know what to do. I laid down there at night and I heard... I think it was a little mouse, was in the old grate where we had some papers in there. And I shut the door with my foot, and there hung her kimono on the back, (and laying down there in that morgue). And just in a little bit someone called me, said, "Billy!" And it was Brother Frank Broy. He said, "Your baby's dying."
I said, "My baby?"

L-238 Said, "Yes, Sharon Rose." Said, "Doc's up there now, and said, 'She's got tubercular meningitis, she nursed it from her mother.'" And said, "She's dying."

L-239   I got in the car, went up there. And there she was, the sweet little thing. And they rushed her to the hospital.

L-240 I went out to see him. Sam come up and said, "Billy, don't you go in that room, you got to think of Billy Paul." Said, "She's dying."
I said, "Doc, I--I got to see my baby."

L-241 He said, "No, you can't go in." Said, "She's got meningitis, Billy, and you'd pack it to Billy Paul."

L-242   And I waited till he got out. I couldn't stand to see her die, and her    mother laying down there in the undertaker's establishment. I tell you, the way of a transgressor is hard. And I--I went, slipped in the door, and when Sam went out and the nurse out, I went down into the basement. It's a little bitty hospital. She was in an isolated place, and the flies was in her little eyes. And they had a little... what we call a "mosquito bar," or little netting over her eyes. And she'd... with little spasm, her little fat leg was moving up and down like that, and her little hands, with that spasm. And I looked at her, and she was just big enough to be cute, about eight months old.

L-243   And her mother used to set her out there with her little three-corners on, you know, in the yard, when I'd come up. And I'd toot the horn, and she'd go, "goo-goo, goo-goo," reaching for me, you know.

L-244 And there laid my darling, dying. I looked down to her, and I said, "Sharry, you know Daddy? You know Daddy, Sharry?" And when she looked... She was suffering so hard till one of them pretty little blue eyes had crossed. It liked to have tore my heart out of me.

L-245 I knelt down, I said, "Lord, what have I done? Have not I preached the Gospel on the street corners? I've done everything that I know to do. Don't hold it against me. I never called them people 'trash.' It was her that called them people 'trash.'" I said, "I'm sorry it all happened. Forgive me. Don't--don't take my baby." And while I was praying, looked like a black... like a sheet or cloth come down. I knowed He had refused me.

L-246   Now, there was the hardest and the most treacherous time of my life. When I raised up and looked at her, and I thought... Satan put in my mind, "Well, you mean as hard as you've preached, and the way that you've lived, and now when it comes to your own baby, He'll turn you down?"


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