Finally Gault was ready. He reared back and fired the spinnerbait to the exact spot where the sunken brushpile should have been.
“Come on, mother,” he said. “Suck on this.”
31
“Explain to me,” the Reverena Charles Weeb said from the barber chair, “exactly how that shit got on the air.”
“The promo spot?” Deacon Johnson asked.
“Yes, Izzy. With all the police cars.”
“It was a live remote, Charles, just like you wanted. ‘We interrupt our regular programming to take you to the Dickie Lockhart Memorial Bass Blasters blah, blah, blah. Tune in later for the exciting finish.’ ”
“Sixteen frigging cop cars, Izzy—it looked like a dope raid, not a fishing tournament.”
“It wasn’t like we invited them.”
“Oh no,” Charlie Weeb said, “you went one better. You beamed them into eleven million households.”
Deacon Johnson said, “We’d already paid for the satellite time, Charles. I think you’re overreacting.”
Weeb squirmed impatiently while the barber worked on his bushy blond eyebrows. He thought: Maybe Izzy’s right, maybe the cop cars weren’t so bad. Might even get viewers curious, jack up the ratings.
“May I bring him in now?” Deacon Johnson asked.
“Sure, Izzy.” Weeb was done with his haircut. He gave the barber a hundred dollars and told him to go home. Weeb checked himself in the mirror and splashed on some Old Spice. Then he went to the closet and selected a pale raspberry suit, one of his favorites. He was stepping into the shiny flared trousers when Deacon Johnson returned with the designated sinner.
“Well, you’re certainly a big fella,” Weeb said.
“I must be,” said the man.
“Deacon Johnson tells me you’re blind.”
“Not completely.”
“Well, no, of course not,” Reverend Weeb said. “No child of God is completely blind, not in the spiritual sense. His eyes are your eyes.”
“That’s damn good to know.”
“What’s your name, sinner?”
“They call me Skink.”
“What’s that, Scandinavian or something? Skink.” Weeb frowned. “Would you mind, Mr. Skink, if today you took a biblical name? Say, Jeremiah?”
“Sure.”
“That’s excellent.” Reverend Weeb was worried about the man’s braided hair, and he pantomimed his concern to Deacon Johnson.
“The hair stays,” Skink said.
“It’s not that bad,” Deacon Johnson interjected. “Actually, he looks a little like one of the Oak Ridge Boys.”
Charlie Weeb conceded the point. He said, “Mr. Skink, I guess they told you how this works. We’ve got a dress rehearsal in about twenty minutes, but I want to warn you: the real thing is much different, much more . . . emotional. You ever been to a televised tent healing before?”
“Nope.”
“People cry, scream, drool, tremble, fall down on the floor. It’s a joyous, joyous moment. And the better you are, the more joyous it is.”
“What I want to know,” Skink said, “is do I really get healed?”
Reverend Weeb smiled avuncularly and flicked the lint off his raspberry lapels. “Mr. Skink, there are two kinds of healings. One is a physical revelation, the other is spiritual. No one but the Lord himself can foretell what will happen this afternoon—probably a genuine miracle—but at the very least, I promise your eyes will be healed in the spiritual sense.”
“That won’t help me pass the driver’s test, will it?”
Charlie Weeb coughed lightly. “Did Deacon Johnson mention that we pay in cash?”
At five sharp, the special live edition of Jesus in Your Living Room flashed via satellite across the far reaches of the Outdoor Christian Network. Radiant and cool, the Reverend Charles Weeb appeared behind his pink plaster pulpit and welcomed America to the scenic and friendly new community of Lunker Lakes, Florida.
“We are particularly delighted to be joined by hundreds of Christian brothers and sisters who flew all the way down here to share this exciting day with us. Thank you all for your love, your prayers, and your down payments . . . as you’ve seen for yourself, Florida is still a paradise, a place of peacefulness, of inner reflection, of celebrating God’s glorious work by celebrating nature. . . .”
Camera number one swung skyward.
“And see there, as I speak,” said Reverend Weeb, “eagles soar over this beautiful new Elysium!”
The high-soaring birds were not eagles, but common brown turkey vultures. The cameraman was under strict instructions to avoid closeups.
Camera number two panned to the audience—starchy, contented, attentive faces, except for one man in the front row, who was not applauding. He wore an ill-fitting sharkskin suit, a frayed straw hat, and black sunglasses. He did not look like a happy Christian soldier; more like Charles Manson on steroids. Camera two did not linger on his face for long.
Charlie Weeb didn’t call on him for twenty minutes. By that time the audience throbbed in a damp and weepy frenzy. As Weeb had predicted, fat women were fainting left and right. Grown men were bawling like babies.
At a nod from Reverend Weeb, two young deacons in dove-white suits led the blind man to the stage.
“You poor wretched sinner,” Weeb said. “What is your name?”
“Jeremiah Skink.”
“Ah, Jeremiah!”
The audience roared.
“Jeremiah, do you believe in miracles?”
“Yes, Brother Weeb,” Skink said. “Yes, I do.”
“Do you believe the Lord is here at Lunker Lakes today?”
“I believe he’s here with you,” Skink said, reciting the lines, which had been cut drastically due to problems at rehearsal.
“And, Jeremiah, do you believe he watches over his children?”
“He loves us all,” Skink said.
“You have been blind, lo, for how long?”
“Lo, for quite a while,” Skink said.
“And the doctors have given up on you?”
“Totally, Reverend Weeb.”
“And you’ve even given up on yourself, haven’t you, brother?”
“Amen,” Skink said, as a Minicam zoomed in on the sunglasses. He was mad at himself for caving in about the straw hat and sharkskin suit.
Reverend Weeb dabbed his forehead with a kerchief and rested a pudgy pink hand on Skink’s shoulder.
“Jeremiah,” he said momentously, “on this glorious tropical day that God has given us, on a day when Christian sportsmen are reaping fortunes from these pristine waters behind us, on such a day it is God’s wish that you should see again. You should see the glory of his sunshine and his sky and the breathtaking natural beauty of his modestly priced family town-home community. Would you like to see that, Jeremiah? Would you like to see again?”
“You bet your ass,” Skink said, deviating slightly from the script.
Reverend Weeb’s eyebrows jumped, but he didn’t lose tempo. “Jeremiah,” he went on, “I’m going to ask these good Christian people who are witnessing with us today at Lunker Lakes to join hands with one another. And all of you at home, put down your Bibles and join hands in your living room. And I myself will take your hands, Jeremiah, and together we will beseech Almighty Jesus to bless you with the gift of sight.”
“Amen,” Skink said.
“Amen!” echoed the crowd.
“Make this sinner see!” Reverend Weeb cried to the heavens.
“See!” the crowd shouted. “See! See!”
Skink was getting into the act, in spite of himself. “See me, feel me!” he hollered.
“See him, feel him!” the audience responded. A strange new verse, but it had a pleasing cadence.
Hastily Reverend Weeb steered the prayer chant back to more conventional exhortations. “God, save this wretched sinner!”
“Save him!” echoed the crowd.
Like a turtle suddenly caught on the highway, Rev
erend Weeb retracted his neck, drew in his extremities, and blinked his eyes. The trance lasted a full minute before he snapped out. Raising his arms above his head, he declared: “The time is nigh. Jesus is coming to our living room!”
The audience waited rapturously. The Minicam was so close you could have counted the pores on Charlie Weeb’s nose.
“Jeremiah?” he said. “Repeat after me: ‘Jesus, let me see your face.’ ”
Skink repeated it.
“And, ‘Jesus, let me see the sunshine.’ ”
“Jesus, let me see the sunshine.”
“And, ‘Jesus, let me see the pure Christian glory of your newest creation, Lunker Lakes.’ ”
“Ditto,” Skink said. Now came the fun part.
“The Lord has spoken,” Weeb declared. “Jeremiah, my dear Christian brother, remove thy Wayfarers!”
Skink took off the sunglasses and tucked them in the top pocket of the suit. A ripple of shock passed through the audience. Skink had not allowed the makeup girls near his face. The Minicams backed off fast.
Averting his eyes, Reverend Weeb bellowed: “Jeremiah, are you truly healed?”
“Oh yes, Brother Weeb.”
“And what is it you see?”
“A great man in a raspberry suit.”
The audience applauded. Many shouted febrile praises to the heavens.
Beaming modestly, Reverend Weeb pressed on: “And, Jeremiah, above my head there is a joyous sign—a sign invisible to your eyes only a few short moments ago. Tell us what it says.”
This was Skink’s big cue, the lead-in to the live tournament coverage. Since it was assumed he would still be mostly blind after the healing, Skink had been asked to memorize the banner and pretend to be reading it on the air. The banner said: “Lunker Lakes Presents the Dickie Lockhart Memorial Bass Blasters Classic.”
But those were not the words that Skink intended to say into the microphone.
Charlie Weeb waited three long beats. “Jeremiah?”
Skink raised his eyes to the banner.
“Jeremiah, please,” Weeb said, “what does the sign say?”
“It says: ‘Squeeze My Lemon, Baby.’ ”
A hot prickly silence fell over the stage. Terror filled the face of the Reverend Charles Weeb. His mouth hung open and his gleaming bonded caps clacked vigorously, but no spiritual words issued forth.
The big blind man with the pulpy face began to weep.
“Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Brother Weeb. Thanks for everything.”
With that, Skink turned to face camera one.
And winked.
And when he winked, the amber glass owl eye popped from the hole in his head and bounced on the stage with the sharp crack of a marble. They heard it all the way in the back row.
“Oh, I can see again, Brother Weeb,” the formerly blind man cried. “Come, let me embrace you as the Lord embraced me.”
With simian arms Skink reached out and seized the Minicam and pulled it to his face.
“Squeeze my lemon, baby!” he moaned, mashing his lips to the lens.
In the crowd, thirteen women fainted heavily out of their folding chairs.
This time it was for real.
“Want a beer?” Lanie asked.
“No,” said Dennis Gault.
“A Perrier?” Lanie dug into the ice chest.
“Quiet,” her brother said.
He had been casting at the brushpile for a long time without a nibble. He had tried every gizmo in the tacklebox, plus a few experimental hybrids, but returned to the Double Whammy out of stubbornness. It had been Dickie Lockhart’s secret lure, everybody knew that, so Dennis Gault was dying to win the tournament with it. Flaunt it. Rub it in. Show the cracker bastards that their king was really dead.
Gault knew he was in the right spot, for the sonic depth-finder provided a detailed topography of the canal bottom. The brushpile came across as a ragged black spike on an otherwise featureless chart; an elliptical red blip shone beneath it.
That was the fish.
From the size of the blip, Dennis Gault could tell the bass was very large.
It did not stay in one place, but moved slowly around the fringes of the submerged crates. Gault aimed his casts accordingly.
“Why won’t the damn thing eat?” Lanie asked.
“I don’t know,” Gault said, “but I wish you’d be quiet.”
Lanie made a face and went back to her magazines. She wanted her brother to win the tournament as much as he did, but she didn’t fully understand why he took it so seriously—especially since he didn’t need the money. At least Bobby Clinch had had good reasons to get tense over fishing tournaments; he was trying to keep groceries on Clarisse’s table and gas in Lanie’s Corvette.
She spun in the pedestal seat so the sun was at her back, and flipped to an article on bulimia.
Thirteen feet beneath the bass boat, in a tea-colored void, the great fish sulked restively. A primitive alarm had gone off somewhere in its central nervous system; a survival warning, powerful but unselective. The great fish could not know what triggered the inner response—acute oxygen depletion, brought about by toxins in the water—but she reacted as all largemouth bass do when sensing a change in the atmosphere.
She decided to gorge herself.
Loglike, she rose off the bottom and hung invisible beneath the floating shadow. She waited under the boat for the familiar rhythmic slapping noise, and peered through liquid glass for the friendly face of the creature who always brought the shiners. The hunger had begun to burn in her belly.
Glancing at the screen of the depth-finder, Dennis Gault said: “My God, the damn thing’s right under us.”
“I sure don’t see it,” Lanie said.
“Under the boat,” her brother said. “Right there on the sonar.”
The fish was so close that he didn’t need to cast. He merely dropped the spinnerbait straight down, counted to twelve, and began the slow retrieve. The lure swam unmolested past the brushpile and rattled up, up, up toward the surface. Its rubber skirt shimmied, and its twin spoons twirled. Its mechanical agitation exuded the fear of the pursued, yet it did not behave like a frog or a minnow or even a crawdad. In fact, it resembled absolutely nothing in nature—yet the great fish engulfed it savagely.
Dennis Gault had never felt such a force. When the fish struck, he answered three times, jerking with all his might. The rod bowed and the line twanged, but the thing did not budge. It felt like a cinderblock.
“Sweet Jesus,” Gault said. “Elaine, I’ve got it!”
She dropped her magazine and went fumbling for the landing net.
“No, not yet!” Her brother was panting so heavily that Lanie wondered if she should get a brown bag ready.
The great fish had begun to do something that no bass had ever been able to do to Dennis Gault—it was taking line. Not just in a few heady spurts, either, but in a sizzling streak. Gault pressed his thumb to the spool and yelped as the flesh burned raw before his eyes. The bass never slowed.
With his free hand Gault turned on the ignition and put the boat in reverse: he would back down on the beast, as if it were a marlin or a tuna.
“What should I do?” Lanie asked, moving to the back of the boat.
“Take the wheel when I say so.”
Forty yards away, the fish broke the surface. Too heavy to clear the water, it thrashed its maw in seismic rage, the lure jingling in its lower lip. To Dennis Gault the freakish bass seemed as murky and ominous as a bull alligator. He couldn’t even guess at the weight; its mouth looked as broad as a basketball hoop.
“Holy shit,” Lanie said, dazzled.
“Here, take it.” Gault motioned her to the steering wheel. “Take it straight back on top of this bitch.” He stood up and stuck the butt of the rod in his belly, levering his back and thigh muscles into the fight. The fish seemed oblivious. For every foot of line Dennis Gault gained, the giant bass would reclaim two.
“Faster,” Gault tol
d his sister, who nudged the throttle. She had never driven a Ranger before, but figured it couldn’t be much different from the Vette.
Motoring in reverse, the boat gradually ate up the distance between Dennis Gault and the thing on the end of his line. After several brief surges, the bass bore deep and hunkered on the bottom to regain its wind.
Gault held such faith in his expensive tackle and in his knowledge of fish behavior that he felt confident tightening the drag on his reel. The purpose was to prevent the bass from running out any more line, and for any other hawg the strategy might have worked: the twenty-pound monofilament was extremely strong, the graphite rod pliant but stout. Finally, and most important to Gault’s reasoning, the fish should have rightfully been exhausted after such an extraordinary battle.
Gault twisted the drag down so that nothing smaller than a Mack truck could have stolen more line. Then he began to reel.
“I think it’s coming,” he announced. “By God, the fucker’s giving up.”
The great fish bucked its head and resisted surrender, but Gault was able to lift her off the bottom. Unlike the wily old lunkers of well-traveled farm ponds and tourist lakes, this bass had never before felt the sting of the hook, had never struggled against invisible talons. She had acquired no tricks to use on Dennis Gault and his powerful noise machine; all she had was her strength, and in the bad water there was little of it left.
Gault savored the feel of the fish weakening, and a faint smile came over his face. If Dickie weren’t already dead, he thought, the sight of this monster hanging at the dock would kill him. Gault checked to make sure the landing net was within reach.
Then the line went slack.
For a sickening moment Gault thought the bass had broken off, but then he figured it out. The bass was coming in fast. He reeled frenetically, trying to bring the line tight.
“Elaine, it’s running at us—go the other way!”
She jammed the engine in gear and the boat churned forward, roiling the water to a foam.
The great fish came to the top; a big bronze drainpipe, hovering behind the stem. It was dark enough and deep enough to be the shadow of something, not the thing itself. For the first time Dennis Gault realized its true dimensions and felt a hot rush. This fish was undoubtedly a world record; already he could see his name on the plaque. Already he could picture the bass mounted on the wall behind his desk; the taxidermist would brighten its flanks, touch up the gills, put some fury back in the dull purple eyes.