The ones leaving didn’t so much as look embarrassed.
Fighting himself, he quelled his urge to scream at the defectors, to run after them, it was hard. This church was his life, his first and only success. He had known cold and hunger and despair. The Tabernacle was the only good thing feat had ever come to him. He was a man of many pasts. He had been a nightclub comic in Los Angeles, working the toilets, telling sorry jokes to scabrous drunks for fifty dollars a week.
“Little Red Riding Hood gets stopped by the Big Bad Wolf. ‘Okay, Little Red,’ the wolf says, ‘pull down your panties and bend over. You’re gonna get it up the ass.’ Little Red Riding Hood pulls a .357 Magnum out of her basket. ‘The hell I am,’ she says, ‘you’re gonna eat me, just like it says in the story.’ ”
Was his problem that they knew, that some of his past somehow clung to him, a stink of cigar smoke and cheap booze, of midnight bus rides and nights in motels without names? Humor. When he got a laugh, it was like a blessing from on high.
There were worse things, though, that clung to him, things far worse than the residue of a few scabrous jokes. During the seventies he had been a social worker for the city of Atlanta, specializing in home placement for unwanted children. There had been trouble, big trouble. She had been a lovely butterfly of a girl, soft and smooth and saucy. Once he had been proud of how he had helped her.
Despite the dropping of the charges, he remained the object of persistent suspicion in Atlanta welfare circles. His little twenty-second mistake—not knowing his own strength—had condemned him for all eternity, but it had also kindled in him this fire to save others.
Everybody in the church was watching him. It was up to him to keep them a little longer or let them go.
He hated for them to leave on such a dismal note. One little flicker of life, hope springing up, the feeling of Jesus right here in the room, then this emptiness.
His mind flashed to a bright, gleaming image of Amanda Walker. That niece of the doctor’s was so perishingly, delicately beautiful. And yet her eyes were full of firmness and intelligence. She was just the kind of woman he dreamed of, as lovely as an opening rose, yet strong enough to take him well in hand.
Firmly in hand. When he imagined offering her his guilty heart and asking forgiveness, he felt a shaft of agonized longing in his breast, just as if some demonic arrow had pierced him.
The restlessness in the room was getting worse. What the devil had this service started out about, anyway? He couldn’t even remember. To buy a few seconds he took another pull at his water. Sister Winifred minced across from the choir box and refilled it.
Nervously, feeling more and more helpless, he flipped the pages of his Bible. Sometimes this worked.
Why had he thought of the woman now? Maybe the Bible would give the answer.
Then he saw a word flashing past, a promising word: harlot. What a friend he had in the Lord! He cried out the passage to which he had been led: “Wherefore, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord God: Because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness discovered through thy whoredoms with thy lovers, and with all the idols of thy abominations, and by the blood of thy children!”
He paused. The faces were on him again, the eyes coming back to life. He felt much better. “Well, now, wasn’t that some witness! Oh, yes!” His laughter, ironic, angry, crackled through the silent crowd. “The very whore was among us, witnessing to the lies of the demon doctor.” He pointed straight down the empty aisle. “And worse, she is going to the house of the pagan, to help her make more evil books for our children. Mark my words, that beautiful girl bears the mark of the demon upon her white flesh. And I warn you, she is here as an agent of the Dark One, come to spread corruption and confusion among the children!”
There was response then, a little shocked whispering among the older folk. The young people just stared.
As good as it had sounded to him, this was obviously not quite right. Something was still missing, the focus, the damned focus. He plunged on. “Is it not our duty to cast the abomination from our midst, to cast out the shadow of evil that so vexes us, that turns the hearts of our children from the service of the Lord? And who is the whore’s helper and employer? That woman, oh, yes, the pagan of the hills, none other. Yea, they are the unholy, the denizens come up from the deep. Yea, they are of Leviathan’s army, oh, yes!”
Faces hardened. “Praise God!” came the shouts. This was a little better. Just a little.
“So I say to you, evil walks and talks in the form of woman, yea, even a woman dressed in the clothing of a man, in those bottom-wiggler jeans. ‘The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, for that is an abomination unto the Lord!’ ”
Ah. There was a marked improvement in the interest level. Nobody was leaving now: the room was touched by new energy.
Were they only shocked by his fury, or did they believe the news he brought of the evil among them? He took a drink, stared from face to face. “Repent ye,” he shouted at one, “Repent,” at another—”O Lord, give us strength!”
Instead of blazing up with righteous love, those he had eye contact with glanced away. Despite the improvement he wasn’t reaching them realty yet.
He needed a simple, incendiary word that they could rally to, a fiery word that would entangle all three demons in one net of truth.
A glance at his watch told him it was closing in on 10:30. The service had been going on far too long, given the restlessness of the crowd. It was bad psychology to have people feel relief when the service ended. They ought to be left uplifted and longing for more. “Leave them feeling as children who have just been praised by their fine old father,” a mentor had said. He struggled, he prayed in his heart, but no word came. He would have to drop the matter for the time being and go on to the last part of the service.
May the Lord find his word for him.
“So repent you now, good people, come forth, come forth and bring your sins before man and God! Come, have no fear of the love of God nor the ears of your brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus wants your sins. So be free with them, and bring them to his Holy Altar!”
He signaled Winifred, who started the organ. The choir hummed obediently along, “Amazing Grace.”
Brother Pierce bowed his head.
A tall man stood up from deep kneeling. He wore a gray-striped suit and a vest. He looked much more prosperous than the run of the congregation. As he came forward, Brother Pierce recalled his name: Roland Howells, chief teller of the Maywell State Bank & Trust. Not a tither. According to Mazie Knowland, who worked at the regional IRS office, Howells’ 1981 income tax return showed $28,000 gross salary. Contribution that year of exactly $600.
What would he repent, this secret miser?
Howells came to the place appointed for confession and knelt before the congregation. “My name is Roland Howells.”
“Speak up! If we can’t hear you, neither will the Lord!”
“I am Roland Howells! I have to confess that I have been cruel to my wife, I have shouted, I have taken the name of the Lord in vain, and before God I have struck her.”
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Brother Roland!”
“Praise God, brothers and sisters, forgive me and pray for me. My wife took my son and left my bed and board, because I was hard and full of anger.”
Something struck Brother Pierce as he listened to this man’s trouble. Quite often lately members of the congregation had come forward to witness to the breakup of their families.
Very often. Sometimes three or four in a single service. Maywell was a quiet, settled place of barely five thousand inhabitants Not your divorcing kind of town. Brother Pierce Shook the penitent’s hand, wondering. “The Lord will return them to you if you pray well, brother.”
“I hope so. Brother Pierce. I sure do miss them. They’re out there on the estate, I know that, I got a phone call.”
Good God. Those words immediately brought
another witness, a woman of perhaps fifty, her fingers nicotine-stained, face slick and pallid. There was something abolished about that wasteland of fat, smelly skin, probably full of the kind of imperfections that ruined a kiss to the flesh, moles and seedwarts and prickly little hairs.
“My name is Margaret Lysander. I also lost my family to the estate. My husband, my daughter, my son.
They didn’t want me to come here, and when I got saved, they left for the witches.”
Another one, and even purer gold than the first. The witches were stealing wives and husbands and children from God-fearing Christians, and that was a fact.
Here was something as deeply personal as there could be. A threat to the family was a threat to the very soul.
Something kept entering his mind, then flitting away, an uncaptured thought. A word. He put his fingers in his pocket and wound them around the dry, sharp-boned little fist that lived there.
Maggie Lysander started in again. “I was a good mamma to my kids,” she said. “I didn’t treat ‘em except as the Lord lays down in the Good Book, and as you teach us. Brother Pierce.”
“Amen, sister.”
“It was like they was just bewitched.”
Brother Pierce fairly reeled. Of course, it was so obvious! Bewitched. Witch! Witch! It wasn’t anything wrong with his followers that was making their families walk out on them, it was the witch! And who was a known pagan who would not give her work over to the service of Jesus Christ? Why, the very one who employed the whore and was behind the evil professor!
Brother Pierce waved his arms with excitement. The Good Lord was in him now, in him deep and in him strong! “Oh, I feel the blood of the Lamb flowing in my veins, ohhh, I feel the Lord moving in me!” The Tongues were coming upon him. Maggie Lysander shrank away, the congregation sighed with suppressed excitement. This is what they came for, this was what made Brother Pierce special. Very well. Now they were going to get their money’s worth.
He held his hands out before him, making them shake and tremble as if they were no longer his own.
They were going under the power of the Lord. Then his arms, then his legs and his whole body. He felt himself spinning, saw faces whirl past, faces and rafters and linoleum flooring. He grabbed on to the pulpit.
His mind emptied to make way for the coming of the Word. “Ohhhh Lord!”
“Praise his Name!”
“Praise him!”
“Ohhh, ye have the hand of the witch upon you! God’s people are under the palm of the witch! The witch comes among you, oh, praise God, the filthy sorceress with her charms and dirty talk, she poisons the lives of your children and breaks up your homes, Ohhh Lord! And we cannot raise a finger against her! Ohhh Lord! We cannot do a thing on our own! We got to put down our human ways and let the Lord God do it his way! Ohhh, we got a witch in the dark of the night a-coming to poison your chosen people!” It was as if a fire had been kindled down deep in his soul, a white fire of the breath of the Lamb, a red fire of his blood. Brother Pierce stalked down the aisle. “You and you and you, you got the witches’ charm right on your forehead, Ohhh Lord, she’s bringin’ us division in our houses and death, Lord, we cannot free ourselves, come into our hearts, O Lord, come right now among us!”
Maggie Lysander was the first among the congregation to catch on. Good girl. She arched her back and clapped her hands to her face and shrieked high and savage. “Lord! Lord! I got you in me!” She began to gyrate. Winifred started in on the organ, a syncopated “Rock of Ages” to sort of encourage things along a little. Brother Pierce grabbed a man and kissed him on the mouth. “The Lord is in you-uh!” The man shook and swayed and soon was joined by a dozen people around him, then a dozen more, then more and more. “The Lord is in us-uh! Ohhhhh!” Then more and more, some were shrieking and crying, some were clapping, stamping. Brother Pierce felt climax in his soul, all his false vanity burning away before the fiery coming of the Lamb. The Word was upon him. “Oh Lammaadossachristi! Ohhh rostoleuroxisatime! Lestochristomentisator!”
Maggie Lysander screamed. “Mathama! Lopadoa destona deutcheber!”
“Ohh, Laaaededmedema! Memkakopolesto, yeaaaoooh!” That was a good one! He shut his eyes and swayed and clapped. “Praise the Lord God-uh! Pra-a-aise the Lord God Almighty-uh, yea though they walk through the valleassstomana! Ooohabeiiatking! Ohhseettalbmen! Beestalthnot, statltnot suffer, belsallnot suffer, salnot not—thou shall not suffer a witch to live-uh! There it was, oh, beautiful and true and good! A rich bitch of a witch of a stuck-up Mrs. Constance and her filthy whore of a too pretty-o goddamn girl!
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live! Oh, boy! Oh, the Lord has me! Listen to the Word! Oh, boy!
Ohhhaletitmeanta!”
He was jumping and leaping, and they were all jumping and clapping in heady rhythm, oh, yes, and he kissed one and another, a fat face, a sweated brow, pretty lips, flesh of flesh, his people, his dear people, the people God had given him to make new in the Word. “Lammasuckum!”
He fell among the surging crowd of them, and they were touching him, tearing his clothes, putting their hands against his naked flesh, and raising him high now on a sea of hands, “Praaaise God! God! God!”
They were not gentle, they hurt him, grabbing him and touching him, grabbing his hair, the flesh beneath his tom shirt, grabbing him so it hurt and felt good at the same time, and calling out in tongues, and embracing him among them, men and women and children with their hands on him, praising the Lord God and touching him.
They carried him forth into the cold of the night, beneath the bright enormous buzzing sign where the last white moths of the season fluttered, and beneath the night sky also, Ohhhh Lord! They loved him, they loved him, the Lord made them love him and he cried and they all cried and praised God together right out in the middle of the parking lot, and then they hugged each other. O God be praised and thanked, he was getting his people back!
The congregation linked arms. Spontaneously and without manipulation they began singing “That Old Rugged Cross,” that old, old song from the past days, his boyhood of sorrow and pain, and all the sorrow and pain of them all, the sweet, decent, good, shamefully bewitched children of the Lord God.
One song followed another into the night. Sometime after twelve a fine mist began to fall. They went to their cars then, with no particular plan to do what they did, to drive the night in procession, flashing their lights and honking their horns, out Bridge Street and past the high brick walls of the Collier estate, until the rain changed to sleet, and the sleet to snow, and with much honking and waving and shouted praises, the congregation returned to their homes.
An hour later Brother Pierce lay sweating on his own bed in the trailer behind the Tabernacle, listening to good old country music all the way from WSB a million miles away in Nashville, sucking a bottle of Black Label, his mind clattering with his success. Just like that his congregation was united behind him once again. United against the witch.
If he could keep this going, he guessed he’d even see a tithe from the likes of Miser Howells. This was real inspiration.
Toward morning he knew he was not going to sleep. He had to point up the seriousness of his new issue. Had to leave a message that people cared, that they hated, that they were with their good Brother Pierce all the way.
He put a can of gasoline from the toolshed into his car and drove off about two hours before dawn.
Soon he was out on the lonely road near the Collier wall. A huge cat arched its back in his headlights, then darted to the roadside. Brother Pierce stopped his car. He got out. In his left hand he was carrying a whiskey bottle full of gasoline. He lit a rag stuffed in the neck and hurled it against the wall.
The bloom of gasoline fire swelled and jumped madly at the trees. It was not strong enough to do damage, and was not meant to be. What Brother Pierce wanted was for people to see the black scar this would leave on the wall.
Snowflakes whirled among the flames.
It took less t
han five minutes for the fire to flicker out. But it left a nice, big mark behind.
People would see and it would make them think. Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.
It was just a suggestion.
Chapter 10
Mandy awoke to a clink and clatter beyond the curtains of her bed. She had slept so heavily that for a moment she didn’t remember where she was. Then she stuck her head out to a slap of cold air and the sight of Ivy building a fire in the hearth.
“Good morning.” Maybe it was the cold air or the amazing sight of the snow beyond the window, but her grogginess passed at once.
“Oh, hi. I’m sorry, I was trying to keep quiet.”
“I don’t mind. What time is it?” The sky beyond the windows was gray, saying only that the clouds were low and dawn had not yet come.
“Onto six. You’ve another twenty minutes before the bell.” She put a bundle on the chair. “Here are clothes.”
Ivy’s voice was warm, and her eyes when they met Mandy’s were full of friendship. Yesterday the girl had seemed so reserved—and so mean, creating the trouble with the Hobbes edition and all. She had certainly had a change of mood. Mandy remained angry with her over the business with the book. It wasn’t unreasonable, she thought, to want an apology. Ivy cheerfully poked up the fire.
When it blazed she stepped to the center of the room, hands on hips. “How’s your pot?”
“My—oh, I used it, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean,” Ivy said. She reached under the bed, hauled it out, and glided away with the big blue porcelain pot cradled in her arms. “Breakfast in the kitchen at 6:30,” she called over her shoulder. A moment later Mandy heard her tell Constance that “the lady” was up. How old was Ivy? Seventeen, perhaps. Certainly she was too old to be calling twenty-three-year-old Mandy a “lady.”
It took no small amount of courage to step naked into the freezing-cold room. A curtained bed, she had found, was a most delicious luxury. Maybe the style had been abandoned because it was simply too comfortable. She dashed over to the chair and opened the bundle, finding a bra and panties, and some of the homespun that the others wore, what seemed a shapeless dress that, when she wore it, clung most beautifully.