The world beyond the world, I thought, then put it out of my mind--or tried to--and went to work.
*
I didn't break down and get a laptop of my own for another year, but there was plenty of computing power in Studios 1 and 2--by 2008 we were recording almost everything with Mac programs--and when I got a break around five, I googled C. Danny Jacobs and found thousands of references. Apparently I'd missed quite a lot since "C. Danny" first appeared on the national scene ten years before, but I didn't blame myself. I'm not much of a TV watcher, my interest in popular culture revolved around music, and my churchgoing days were long over. No wonder I had missed the preacher his Wikipedia entry called "the twenty-first-century Oral Roberts."
He had no megachurch, but his weekly Hour of Healing Gospel Power was telecast from coast to coast on high cable channels where the buy-in price was low and the return in "love offerings" was presumably high. The shows were taped at his Old-Time Tent Revivals, which crisscrossed most of the country (steering clear of the East Coast, where people were presumably a bit less credulous). In pictures taken over the years, I watched Jacobs grow older and grayer, but the look in his eyes never changed: fanatical and somehow wounded.
*
A week or so before Hugh and I made our trip to see Jacobs in his native environment, I called Georgia Donlin and asked if I could have her daughter's number--the one who was studying computers at Colorado University. The daughter's name was Brianna.
Bree and I had an extremely interesting conversation.
VIII
Tent Show.
It was seventy miles from Nederland to the Norris County Fairgrounds, which gave Hugh and me plenty of time to talk, but we said almost nothing until we were east of Denver; just sat and looked at the scenery. Except for the ever-present smog line over Arvada, it was a perfect late summer day.
Then Hugh snapped off the radio, which had been playing a steady stream of oldies on KXKL, and said: "Did your brother Conrad have any lingering effects after the Rev fixed up his laryngitis, or whatever it was?"
"No, but that's not surprising. Jacobs said the cure was bogus, a placebo, and I always thought he was telling the truth. Probably he was. That was early days for him, remember, when his idea of a big project was getting better TV reception. Con's mind just needed permission to get better."
"Belief is powerful," Hugh agreed. "So is faith. Look at all the groups and solo acts we have lining up to make CDs, even though hardly anybody buys them anymore. Have you done any research on C. Danny Jacobs?"
"Plenty. Georgia's daughter is helping me with that."
"I've done some myself, and I'll bet plenty of his cures are like your brother's. People with psychosomatic illnesses who decide they're healed when Pastor Danny touches them with his magic God-rings."
That might be true, but after watching Jacobs operate at the Tulsa fairgrounds, I was sure he had learned the real secret of building a tip: you had to give the rubes at least a little steak to go with the sizzle. Women declaring their migraines were gone and men exclaiming their sciatica had departed were all very well, but stuff like that wasn't very visual. They weren't Portraits in Lightning, you might say.
There were at least two dozen debunking websites about him, including one called C. DANNY JACOBS: FAITH'S FRAUD. Hundreds of people had posted to these sites, claiming the "cancerous tumors" Pastor Danny removed were pig's livers or goat guts. Although cameras carried by audience members were forbidden at C. Danny's services, and the film was confiscated if one of the "ushers" glimpsed someone taking snaps, plenty of photos had leaked out just the same. Many of them seemed to actually complement the official videos posted on C. Danny's website. In others, however, the glistening goop in Pastor Danny's hands certainly did look like goat guts. My guess was that the tumors were fake--that part of the show just smelled too carny-from-carny to be anything else. But it didn't mean everything Jacobs was doing was fake. Here were two men in a boat-size Lincoln Continental who could testify to that.
"You had sleepwalking and involuntary movements," Hugh said. "Which, according to WebMD, is called myoclonus. Transient, in your case. Also the need to poke things into yourself, as if down deep you still wanted to be riding the needle."
"All true."
"I had blackouts where I talked and moved around--like booze blackouts, only without the booze."
"And the prismatics," I said.
"Uh-huh. Then there's the girl from Tulsa you told me about. The one who stole the earrings. World's ballsiest smash-and-grab."
"She thought they belonged to her because they were in the picture he took of her. I bet she was rolling around boutiques in Tulsa looking for the dress, too."
"Did she remember breaking into the display case?"
I shook my head. I was long gone from Tulsa by the time Cathy Morse came up for trial, but Brianna Donlin had found a brief item about her online. The Morse girl claimed to remember nothing, and the judge believed her. He ordered a psychological evaluation and released her into the custody of her parents. After that she dropped out of sight.
Hugh was quiet for awhile. So was I. We watched the road unroll. Now that we were out of the mountains, it ran straight as a string all the way to the horizon. At last he said, "What's it for, Jamie? Money? He works the funnel cake circuit for a few years, then one day says, 'Aha, this is chickenfeed, why don't I start a healing ministry and go for the really big bucks?'"
"Maybe, but I never got the idea that Charlie Jacobs cared about the big bucks. He doesn't care about God anymore, either, unless he's done a three-sixty from when he blew up his ministry in my little town, and I didn't see any sign of religious feeling when I was in Tulsa. He cared about his wife and son--that book of photographs I found in his RV was so well thumbed it was just about falling apart--and I'm sure he still cares about his experiments. When it comes to his secret electricity, he's like Mr. Toad with his motorcar."
"I don't follow."
"Obsessed. If I had to guess, I'd say he needs money to keep moving forward with his various experiments. More than he could make running a midway shy."
"So healing's not the end point? That's not the goal?"
I couldn't be sure, but I didn't think healing was the goal. Running a revival biz was undoubtedly a cynical jape at the religion he had rejected as well as a way to turn a great many fast bucks via "love offerings," but Jacobs hadn't healed me for money; that had been a plain old Christian hand up from a guy who had been able to reject the label but not the two basic tenets of Jesus's ministry: charity and mercy.
"I don't know where he's headed," I said.
"Do you think he does?"
"I do, actually."
"This secret electricity. I wonder if he even knows what it is."
I wondered if he even cared. Which was a scary thought.
*
The Norris County Fair ran during the last half of September; I had been there with a lady friend a couple of years before, and it was a big one. This being June, the fairgrounds were deserted except for a single huge canvas tent. Fittingly enough, it was where the cheesiest end of the midway would be when the fair was up and running--the rigged gambling shys and the tittie shows. The large parking lots were filled with cars and pickup trucks, many of them old beaters with bumper stickers saying things like JESUS DIED FOR ME, I LIVE FOR HIM. Crowning the tent, probably bolted to the centerpole, was a huge electric cross in rising barber pole stripes of red, white, and blue. From inside came the sound of an electrified gospel combo and the rhythmic clapping of the audience. People were still streaming in. The majority were graying, but there were plenty of younger folks, too.
"They sound like they're having a good time," Hugh said.
"Yeah. Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show."
With a cool wind blowing in from the plains, it was a comfortable sixty-five outside the tent, but it had to be twenty degrees warmer inside. I saw farmers in bib overalls and elderly wives with flushed, happy faces. I
saw men in suits and women in dressy dresses, as if they had come here directly from their office jobs in Denver. There was a contingent of Chicano ranch hands in jeans and workshirts, some displaying what looked like prison tats below their rolled-up sleeves. I even saw a few inked teardrops. Down front was the Wheelchair Brigade. The six-piece band was swaying and laying down hot licks. In front of them, stepping exuberantly from side to side in voluminous burgundy choir robes, were half a dozen hefty chicks: Devina Robinson and the Gospel Robins. They flashed white teeth in brown faces and clapped their hands over their heads.
Devina herself danced forward, cordless mike in hand, gave out a musical cry that sounded like Aretha in her prime, and launched into song.
"I got Jesus in my heart,
Yes I do, yes I do,
I'm goin up to Glory, so can you!
I could go today
Cause he washed my sins away,
I got Jesus in my heart, yes I do!"
She urged the faithful to join in, which they did with a will. Hugh and I took our places at the back, because by now the tent, which probably held upwards of a thousand, was SRO. Hugh leaned toward me and shouted in my ear, "Dig the pipes! She's great!"
I nodded and began clapping along. There were five verses with plenty of yes I dos, and by the time Devina finished, sweat was rolling down her face and even the Wheelchair People were into it. She climaxed with another Aretha-style ululation, mike held high. The organist and lead guitarist held that last chord for dear life.
When they finally let go, she shouted, "Gimme hallelujah, you beautiful people!"
They did.
"Now give it to me like you know God's love!"
They gave it to her like they knew God's love.
Satisfied on that score, she asked if they were ready for some Al Stamper. They let her know they were more than ready.
The band brought it down to something slow and slinky. The audience took their seats in rows of folding chairs. A bald black man strode briskly onstage, carrying his three hundred-plus pounds with delicious ease.
Hugh leaned close, able to speak more quietly now. "He used to be with the Vo-Lites, in the seventies. Skinny as a rail back then and had an Afro big enough to hide a coffee table in. I thought he was fuckin dead. All the coke he snorted, he should be."
Stamper immediately confirmed this. "I was a big sinner," he confided to the audience. "Now, praise God, I'm just a big eater."
They laughed. He laughed with them, then grew serious again.
"I was saved by the grace of Jesus and healed of my addictions by Pastor Danny Jacobs. Some of you might remember the secular songs I did with the Vo-Lites, and some fewer of you might remember the ones I did when I went out on my own. I'm singin different tunes these days, all those God-sent tunes I once rejected--"
"Praise Jesus!" someone shouted from the audience.
"That's right, brother, praise his name, and that's what I'm gonna do right now."
He launched into "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning," a hymn I remembered well from my childhood, in a voice so deep and true it made my throat ache. By the time he finished, most of the faithful were singing along, their eyes shining.
He did two more songs (the melody and backbeat of the second sounding suspiciously like Al Green's "Let's Stay Together"), then re-introduced the Gospel Robins. They sang; he sang with them; they made a joyous noise unto the Lord and whipped that congregation into a good-God come-to-Jesus frenzy. As the crowd stood, clapping themselves red-handed, the lights in the tent went down, except for a bright white spot at stage left, which was where C. Danny Jacobs entered. It was my Charlie, all right, and Hugh's Rev, but how he had changed since I saw him last.
His voluminous black coat--similar to the one Johnny Cash wore onstage--partially concealed how thin he'd grown, but his gaunt face tattled the truth. There were other truths there, as well. I think most people who have suffered great losses in their lives--great tragedies--come to a crossroads. Maybe not right then, but when the shock wears off. It may be months later; it may be years. They either expand as a result of their experience, or they contract. If that sounds New Age-y--and I suppose it does--I don't apologize. I know what I'm talking about.
Charles Jacobs had contracted. His mouth was a pale line. His blue eyes blazed, but they were caught in nets of wrinkles and looked smaller. Shielded, somehow. The cheerful young man who had helped me make caves in Skull Mountain when I was six, the man who had listened with such kindliness when I told him how Con had gone mute . . . that man now looked like an old-time New England schoolmaster about to birch a recalcitrant pupil.
Then he smiled, and I could at least hope the young guy who had befriended me was still somewhere inside this carny-show gospel shouter. That smile lit up his whole face. The crowd applauded. Partly out of relief, I think. He raised his hands, then lowered them with the palms down. "Sit, brothers and sisters. Sit, boys and girls. Let us take fellowship, one with the other."
They sat in a great rustling swoosh. The tent grew quiet. Every eye was upon him.
"I bring you good news that you have heard before: God loves you. Yes, every one of you. Those who've lived upright lives and those who are neck-deep in sin. He so loved you that he gave His only begotten son--John three: sixteen. On the eve of his crucifixion, His son prayed that you should be kept from evil--John seventeen: fifteen. When God corrects, when He gives us burdens and afflictions, he does so in love--Acts seventeen: eleven. And can he not lift those burdens and afflictions in that same spirit of love?"
"Yes, praise God!" came an exultant shout from Wheelchair Row.
"I stand before you, a wanderer on the face of America, and a vessel of God's love. Will you accept me, as I accept you?"
They shouted they would. Sweat was rolling down my face, and Hugh's, and the faces of those on either side of us, but Jacobs's face was dry and shining, although the spotlight he stood in had to make the air around him even hotter. Add to that the black coat.
"Once I was married, and had a little boy," he said. "There was a terrible accident, and they drowned."
It was like a splash of cold water in my face. Here was a lie when there was no reason to lie, at least none that I could see.
The audience murmured--almost moaned. Many of the women were crying, and a few of the men, as well.
"I turned my face from God then, and cursed Him in my heart. I wandered in the wilderness. Oh, it was New York, and Chicago, and Tulsa, and Joplin, and Dallas, and Tijuana; it was Portland Maine and Portland Oregon, but it was all the same, all the wilderness. I wandered from God, but I never wandered from the memory of my wife and my little boy. I put off the teachings of Jesus, but I never put off this."
He raised his left hand, displaying a gold band that seemed too wide and thick to be an ordinary wedding ring.
"I was tempted by women--of course I was, I'm a man, and Potiphar's wife is always among us--but I stayed true."
"Praise God!" a woman shouted. One who probably thought she'd know a Potiphar's wife if she ever saw that hotbox harlot in matron's clothing.
"And then one day, after refusing such a temptation that was unusually severe . . . unusually seductive . . . I had a revelation from God even as did Saul, on the road to Damascus."
"God's word!" a man shouted, lifting his hands heavenward (top-of-the-tentward, at least).
"God told me I had work, and that my work would be to lift the burdens and afflictions of others. He came to me in a dream and told me to put on another ring, one that would signify my marriage to the teachings of God through His Holy Word and the teachings of His son, Jesus Christ. I was in Phoenix then, working in a godless carnival show, and God told me to walk into the desert without food and water, like any Old Testament pilgrim on the face of the land. He told me that in the wilderness I would find the ring of my second and final marriage. He told me if I remained true to that marriage, I would do great good, and be reunited with my wife and son in heaven, and our true marr
iage would be re-consecrated by His holy throne, and in His holy light."
There were more cries and ejaculations. A woman in a trim business suit, tan hose, and stylish low heels fell into the aisle and began to testify in a language that seemed solely comprised of vowels. The man with her--husband or boyfriend--knelt beside her, pillowing her head with his hands, smiling tenderly, urging her on.
"He doesn't believe a word of it," I said. I was astounded. "Every word is a lie. They must see that."
But they didn't, and Hugh didn't hear me. He was staring, transfixed. The tent was a tumult of gladness, Jacobs's voice rising above it, pounding through the hosannas by the grace of electricity (and a cordless mike).
"All day I walked. I found food someone had left in a trashbin at a rest area, and ate it. I found half a bottle of Co'cola beside the trail, and drank it. Then God told me to leave the path, and although it was coming on to dark by then, and better trailhands than me have died in that desert, I did as he said."
Must have been all the way out in the suburbs by then, I thought. Maybe all the way to North Scottsdale, where the rich folks live.
"The night was dark with clouds, not a star to be seen. But just after midnight, those clouds parted and a ray of moonlight shone down on a pile of rocks. I went to them, and beneath it, I found . . . this."
He held up his right hand. On the third finger was another thick gold band. The audience burst into applause and hallelujahs. I kept trying to make sense of it, and kept coming up short. Here were people who routinely used their computers to stay in touch with their friends and get the news of the day, people who took weather satellites and lung transplants for granted, people who expected to live lives thirty and forty years longer than those of their great-grandparents. Here they were, falling for a story that made Santa and the Tooth Fairy look like gritty realism. He was feeding them shit and they were loving it. I had the dismaying idea that he was loving it, too, and that was worse. This was not the man I'd known in Harlow, or the one who had taken me in that night in Tulsa. Although when I thought of how he had treated Cathy Morse's bewildered and brokenhearted farmer father, I had to admit this man had been on the way even then.