Cloudmaker

by Malcolm Brooks

  The preacher on the stage had a microphone on a stand. An organist off to the side blasted dramatic flourishes. Annelise hadn’t caught the evangelist’s name but he was a firebrand in the usual manner, with a mop of flying hair and rolled shirtsleeves and a necktie that had come loose in the course of his jumping and slashing, sweat running into his eyes like blood from the brow of Christ in Gethsemane.

  He paced like a lion and dragged the microphone stand along with him. O, that mane. “Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, let me tell you. Our ship of state was once piloted by God Almighty, and our seas were calm . . .”

  People had their hands in the air, heads bowed or wrenched upward toward the sailcloth’s soaring peak, eyes screwed shut on some and pried ecstatically wide on others, the gush and babble and staccato yammering of eerie syllables surging and responding and subsiding again into the murmur of raptured bliss, or the hum of some dreamlike state. Aunt Gloria kept her hands raised. A little earlier, her mouth had issued its own odd torrent, and like the language itself, the voice flowing forth was not entirely hers.

  “. . . our passage tranquil, as we sowed the seeds of righteousness and reaped the great rewards of placing the Lord at the tiller. Our nation was buoyant . . .”

  “Amen . . .”

  “. . . our fields were fertile . . .”

  “Amen . . .”

  “. . . our coffers were full. FULL, brothers and sisters, because we knew the FEAR of God, and we felt the love of Christ, and we earned the FULLNESS of the Spirit. Amen?”

  The crowd roared in response. The organ blared. Annelise felt herself swoon, and she knew the broiling density of the air and the packed-in closeness of the crowd had begun to fog her senses like ether. McKee and Houston stood on either side, hemmed right against her. She could feel the heat off both of them, practically taste their trickling sweat. She shook her head hard. She looked straight up and tried to find some oxygen.

  “But, ladies and gentlemen. Brothers and sisters. This nation of ours has chosen a different course.”

  The organ again.

  “We have chosen a different captain. This nation of ours has gone from a ship of righteousness to a ship of fools.

  “FOOLS, my friends, on a SINKING VESSEL, a vessel not known by the fruitful yields of the blessed but by the BARREN SOIL of a dust bowl. By PLAGUES of locust and drought, ushered by the HANGOVER of debauchery, in DEFIANCE of the laws of God and what was once a Christian land.”

  The organ blasted, the Amens sounded, and a general stir rippled in the crowd, a roil of anguish and agreement. Annelise shut her eyes and pleaded for air. Amelia’s silver Electra flashed in her mind, Amelia and her smelling salts. That’s what she needed now.

  “We did not need repeal. We did not need repeal. No. We needed repentance.” The firebrand’s voice had dropped now to what might as well have been a whisper, and he hunched over his microphone like a monk atop a candle stub.

  “My friends, the ripe fruit of sin does not appear as poison, not at first. When Eve took that bite from her own apple that fateful day, six thousand long years ago, that ripe perfect apple, well. The first flavor on the tongue did not appear bitter. And sweet it may have been, but poison it surely was, and we’ve been writhing in the grip of that pollution ever since.”

  With his voice ratcheted down and the crowd supplicant and the sweltering compression of the tent pushing at her hazy brain, Annelise swore she heard running rivulets of sweat, trickling like groundwater in the depths of a cave. Then in a moment of both stupefaction and clarity she realized she was hearing again the hushed whisper of tongues, like the flickering presence of spirits.

  “WE HAVE DECOMMISSIONED ALMIGHTY GOD AND HANDED THE TILLER TO THE DEVIL,” the lion roared, and a piercing squall out of the microphone stabbed like a shriek out of hell. “WE HAVE CONVERTED OUR MISSION SHIP TO A PLEASURE LINER, A PARTY BOAT SO HEAVILY LADEN WITH GOD-HATING, SOUL-CRIPPLING, WHISKEY-SOAKED WASTRELS, SO TOTALLY FREIGHTED WITH DOGS AND SORCERERS AND WHOREMONGERS, SO BLIND TO OUR OWN SELFISH COURSE, WE HAVE FAILED TO SEE LIGHTHOUSE OR BUOY OR HAZARD, AND WHEN THE SHIP RAN AGROUND AND THE PARTY ENDED, WE REALIZED THAT GOD was no longer on board.”

  The fever in the crowd spiked again, and now people were not only crying out in agreement or in tongues but also actually crying out, sobbing and wailing in guilt or repentance or maybe pure divine passion. Packed in as the throng was, a sudden surge rolled through the lines, and Annelise felt herself somehow lifted and then set down again three or four feet back, along with everyone around her.

  The preacher jumped off the stage and away from the microphone, and though he was still yelling somewhere up front, the general din made it impossible to catch what he was saying. Some of the people around her craned their necks to see what was going on, but Annelise wasn’t nearly tall enough. She looked at Huck. Even he was on his tiptoes. She nudged him in the ribs.

  He leaned and put his mouth near her ear. “Somebody fell over and started thrashing.”

  People started singing in the forward ranks, then clapping along, and the organist joined in. “Give me that old-time religion. Give me that old-time religion . . .”

  Soon the entire throng sang, the collective voice drowning even the ardor of the organ. Annelise felt her hands clap together and she observed them as though they were from some far-off place, watched them clap in time to the hymn. Her mouth moved with the words as well, although she couldn’t say whether she truly sang along.

  “Give me that old-time religion. It’s good enough for me . . .”

  The lion was back on the stage, back to his microphone, leading the song. Annelise felt the sting of sweat in her eyes. She was going to pass out if she didn’t get into open air. She turned to McKee but McKee had vanished, as though he and he alone had been snatched away.

  She turned back to Houston. Aunt Gloria was on the other side of him, both hands in the hot air above her head. She couldn’t see Uncle Roy at all. Annelise reached up and put her arm around her cousin’s flushed neck, and he put his head down near her mouth. “I need air.”

  She felt his arm circle and hold her beneath her ribs, and they were pushing their way through the crowd.

  3

  “I’m actually pretty furious at myself,” she told him. They were at the lunch counter in the café drinking Cokes, listening to Bing Crosby on the radio. Pennies from Heaven.

  “What for?”

  “Getting so dizzy in the head, like some complete twit.”

  “Jeepers, you weren’t the only one. I saw ’em carry five or six people out. Suffocating, probably. I dern near was.”

  “Still. I’d like to think of myself as a little tougher stock.” She rattled her ice cubes around. “The sugar’s helping.”

  They’d emerged from the dense air of the revival into full twilight, which meant they’d been inside the tent a few hours at least. She’d lost track of time, she knew that, and uncharacteristically hadn’t ever thought to keep an eye on Blix’s watch. Now the fragments of the whole thing kept reeling through her mind.

  “Do you want some food? Pop’s got credit here.”

  She shook her head. “I’m still a little woozy.”

  Something else occurred to her. She spoke around an ice cube, her own teeth like a painful miracle. “What happened to Yak?”

  “Not sure. I didn’t notice he was gone myself, until we went to leave.”

  She pivoted on her stool. “What on earth does your dad make of it all? I can’t help wondering.”

  Even Houston seemed to speculate. “He’s in a weird spot, I guess. He wants to do right by my ma, and she needs a lot of help, but . . .” He shook the ice in his glass, stared at the ceiling as though the right words might appear. Finally he turned his head to her. “Pop moved me into town to get me off the ranch. Into normal life, I guess.”

  Annelise nodded, slow as the melt in
her mouth. She was beginning to see the light. “Guess I should’ve known.”

  “Well, my ma likes it out there, besides anything else.”

  “I’m sorry, Houston.”

  He started a little. “Sorry for what?”

  Even her smile felt apologetic. “Just that it’s so complicated.”

  Bing Crosby faded away, and Houston stood up from the counter. “Tell you what,” he said, “we don’t get some real pennies from heaven around these parts, we won’t be keeping anybody out on the ranch.” He shook the ice around in his glass again. “I don’t think Pop prays for much, but I bet he does pray for rain.”

  They went out into the blue dusk and down the backstreets toward the fairgrounds. They could hear the calliope, but fainter somehow, in and out of the strains of some other music, which grew louder and louder the closer they got.

  “They’re having a dance,” Annelise said. A band had set up on the little gazebo at the center of the grounds, playing a jitterbug that must have been original, or maybe too new to have reached her ears through the local radio stations. She took him by the arm. “Don’t even try to talk your way out of it.”

  A couple of songs later the band took a break, and they walked with the other dancing couples off the portable floor and back to the lawn. He’d whirled and spun and rotated her as though they were two parts of a gyro, and she’d gone from blearily dissipated to blissfully dizzy in no time. He had the sense to keep right with it.

  They started off down the line of game booths heading for the Ferris wheel and ran smack into Shirley and Raleigh. “Well, if it ain’t Fred and Ginger,” said Raleigh. “Darling, how are you?”

  “I’m just fine, Raleigh.”

  “You two cut a rug like nobody’s business,” said Shirley. “Hope it don’t get back to Mrs. Finn and the good reverend.”

  “Oh, they’re indisposed.” She glanced at Houston. “Back at that other carnival. I don’t think they’ll be leaving anytime soon.”

  Shirley flashed a bottle. “That’s what we want to hear.”

  They walked out through the dark toward the train depot. She and Shirley and Raleigh passed the whiskey between them a few times. Houston, as ever, declined. They headed toward the back of the grain elevator, where a bunch of kids were already drinking. Annelise spotted Katie Calhoun. Evidently Houston did as well, because the next thing she knew he was seizing the bottle from Raleigh and pulling down way too big a hit.

  He came out of it sputtering.

  Shirley hooted. “Easy there, chief. They don’t call it firewater for nothing.”

  Annelise knew he’d been avoiding Katie since the Spring Ball. “Just enough for courage,” she told him, and they went ahead to join the others.

  Half an hour later he still hadn’t screwed up any courage, although it wasn’t for lack of alcohol. He’d gone off with Raleigh, and by the time they ambled back her cousin was clearly well along in his cups. He leaned against her.

  “I don’t know why I never did this before.” He already had a slur.

  “Those sound like famous last words.” She herself was a little tipsy, as much from missing dinner as actual drink. She realized now that they should’ve eaten in the café. She should have hit the water closet, too—all the Coca-Cola and melted ice and now hooch had her pressurized like a dirigible.

  “We need to get you some food.”

  “Nuh-uh,” he said. “I’m going to talk to Katie.”

  Hoo boy. “Houston, there’s sort of a fine line here—”

  “What? You were right. What’s there to be afraid of? I see it now. She’ll know I’m no Goody Two-shoes, okay? I mean, I’m not at the revival, am I? I’m right here.” He hiccupped a little. “Drinking.”

  Lawdy she had to pee. She looked around for Raleigh. “Wait right here. Don’t drink anything else.”

  She dragged Raleigh back a moment later. “He’s already half in the bag, and I have to run back to the carnival for a bit. I’ll get him some food, but I’m ordering you to keep him on the straight and narrow till I get back.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Raleigh said, and Annelise couldn’t help but think of that wild-eyed sermonizer back at the ball field. The devil at the helm.

  “Don’t disappoint me,” she said. “That means both of you.” She started for the racket and lights.

  “She’s a pistol, all right,” Raleigh said as soon as she was out of earshot.

  Huck could not believe how quickly this lightning had gone to his head. He stole a look at Katie in the dim light off the elevator. She was talking to Bobby Duane, that lunkhead. “What?”

  “I said, she’s a heck of a pistol,” Raleigh repeated.

  It occurred to him that he needed a motorcycle, a big V-twin with a real roar to it. Lindbergh had ridden one all over the place back in his barnstorming days, an Excelsior to be exact, a very fast bike indeed. “Boy, I’ll say,” he muttered. “She’s a dish and a half.”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Raleigh. “Are we talking about the same thing?”

  Excelsior was out of business, though. He guessed it would have to be a Harley, or an Indian. Not the 45 or the Scout, of course—he was six-two already, for crying out loud. He needed the big 74 or the Indian Chief. That would get her attention. “We’re talking about exactly the same thing. She’s a damn rocket.”

  “Well. I guess it’s probably the liquor talking, but you may as well call it like you see it. I mean, at least she ain’t your sister.”

  That damn Bobby had her laughing now and Huck knew he had to step in before things really went south. Why in the hell had he waited so long? “What?” he said. “Who’s not my sister?”

  “Uh, your cousin?” said Raleigh. “Your rocket cousin?”

  Another voice cut in from behind him. “I’d like to ride that rocket. I’d like to fly her straight to the dern moon.”

  The words took a long pause to register, but once they did, they hit like a fist. Who the hell had that kind of gall? Huck turned and squared off like a gunfighter. Royce, standing there with Shirley.

  “What did you say?”

  Royce looked at him. “I said I hear you, brother. That ice-queen cousin of yours is one hot little rocket.” He shook his head. “You are one lucky doggie, having that little darlin’ around all the time.” Royce held a can of beer and took a swig. He eyed Huck again. “How’s she look oh-natur-al?”

  Huck clenched and unclenched his fists. “How’s she look what?”

  Another long swig. “You know—how’s she look in her birthday suit? How’s she look naked?”

  Shirley fixed on Huck. “Might want to let this one go, hoss.”

  “I ain’t letting it go,” Huck shot back. Liquid courage was right. Or righteous liquid fury maybe. He felt like Attila the Hun.

  “I don’t mean you, son,” Shirley told him.

  Huck barely heard him. “None of your damn business, you dern . . . troglodyte.”

  “Oh, come on. You just owned it with all that rocket talk, so don’t go all Mrs. Grundy on us now. I had a cousin looked like that, I’d sure have my eye to the keyhole every chance I got. What’s a troglodyte?”

  “A cretin.”

  “Hey, Huck,” Raleigh said cautiously.

  “You shouldn’t have dropped out of school, Shirl,” Royce was saying. “I mean, the gams on that little filly, in gym class? I’d have bent her right over the tennis net before you could say—”

  Maybe he would’ve gone on, but Huck had already launched like a stone from a catapult. Neither Royce nor anyone else had time to react. Two fast steps forward, and he socked Royce square in the kisser.

  “Interesting watch, miss.”

  She’d nearly reached the line to the ladies’ room on the far side of the fairgrounds, could hear the dance band playing again over at the gazebo, hear the dizzy calliope and kids s
houting from the rides. She looked at the man who’d fallen in beside her. Cream-colored fedora with a darker band, light summer suit with no tie. Twice her age at least, but then she doubted he’d figured that out yet.

  “Thank you.” She kept walking.

  So did he. “I couldn’t help but notice. It’s one big watch.”

  “It is that.” She held it up in the blaze from the bulbs. Nearly ten o’clock already. “It belongs to my beau.”

  He grinned. “Just head it right off at the pass, eh?”

  He was closer to her than she’d like or even consider normal, and the alcoholic lightness in her head shifted to a sort of half-wary intuition. “Fair’s fair, right?”

  “Fair’s reasonable enough. Your beau’s a flyboy, I take it.”

  “He is. Guess you are, too, or maybe just a watch salesman?” They’d made the tail of the line now. She shifted away from him.

  “Something like that.” He held out his hand. “May I? See the watch, that is?”

  A woman with a little girl in tow emerged from the squat water closet, and the line advanced. She stepped forward but held up her wrist. She tried to find his eyes beneath the shadow of the hat brim.

  He was about to say something, but thank God another voice beat him to it.

  “Darling. Where have you been all my life?”

  McKee moved up alongside her and she took his arm. She turned her face into his neck. “Right here waiting.”

  “Would you like to introduce me to your friend?”

  Annelise lifted her head back up but kept her grip on his arm. “I can’t. He hasn’t exactly introduced himself to me.”

  The mystery man was backing away, touching the brim of his hat. “You’re a very lucky man,” he said to McKee.