“Them’s the exact words you used, sugar,” Mable said. “You turned to me and said, ‘Wouldn’t this be a golden opportunity?’”
“I thought during intermission I might turn on my loudspeaker and start preaching. Try to bring some souls to God. But then this thing happened, this thing of the Devil. He’ll do that every time, son. You got some good designs, well, ole Devil will come right in there on you, trying to mess things up. Even Oral Roberts, and you know how close he is to God, has problems with the Devil. Ole booger come right in Oral’s bedroom once and tried to choke him, tried to choke the life out of him.”
“But his wife run the Devil off and saved him,” Mable said. “She come right in there and ran him right off.” She patted Sam on the head. “I’d do that for you, wouldn’t I, sugarbunch?”
“Yes, you would, dumpling, you surely would. But now, what we got here is a boy that wants to join our flock. Am I right, boy?”
‘That’s right,” I said.
“Good, good . . . You ain’t got no food on you, do you?”
“No,” I said. I thought about the jerky back in the camper, but it was really Bob’s and I couldn’t offer it without his permission. Besides, I was afraid he’d shoot me.
“Well, let’s get the baptizing part over with.” With that Sam spit on his fingers and rubbed them across the top of my head. “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen. Okay.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“You were expecting a tub?”
“No ... I mean, I guess it’s okay.”
“Sure it is. You feel any different?”
I thought about it. “No, not a thing.”
“Just a little tingle or something?”
“Nope.”
Sam looked distressed. “Well, sometimes it takes some time, so you give it some. Thing I’m gonna want you to do is go to the services a little later on. You come to that, son, and I’ll hand you the Lord on a silver platter. Mable, bring the sand, will you, darling?”
Mable went behind the blanket curtain and came back with a big hourglass. The sand in the top half had almost run out.
“This here has come in handy. It was just one of them things we picked up once and hadn’t never used, but since we been here in this outdoor picture show, we’ve used it quite a bit. It’s an eight-hour hourglass. When it runs through twice, we have services. Unless we forget to turn it or we sleep through, but that ain’t often.”
We sat there a minute and he told me a couple of plumbing adventures, then he said he had to go get ready and he went behind the blanket curtain and left me with Mable, who took his seat in front of the steering wheel. She looked at the rainbow GOD IS LOVE on the dash for a while, then put her eye on the Jesus hanging from the mirror, and finally looked out at the wing mirror as if she might find a revelation there. Things being as they were, I was kind of short on small talk, and as the weather was constant, that was out. I was beginning to feel like an enormous jackass.
“You know,” Mable said out of the clear blue, “wish I had me some ham bone and some dried beans, pintos. I think I miss that the most, ham bone and beans. I can make the best pot of beans. I just take me some pintos, the dried kind, and soak them in a pan of water overnight, then the next morning I start cooking them, making sure I don’t let all the water boil down. I chop me up a bunch of onions, put some salt and pepper in there, and that ham bone, and just cook and cook and cook till that water gets real soupy. You fix you some cornbread with that, even hot-water cornbread, and I tell you, you’ve got major eating, mister. I just dream about food all the time. How about you?”
“I think about it a lot,” I said. “Mostly hamburgers. Sometimes pizza.”
“You do like pinto beans and cornbread, though?”
“I’ve got no complaints against it. Right now most anything sounds good.”
She seemed to consider that for a moment, then she said, “You know, this is all the work of the Devil. And we can beat the Devil if we try. My next-door neighbor back when Sam was plumbing all the time was named Lillie, and she had these Hell’s Angel types move in across from her. Drove them motorsickles, you know. And she said they were worshiping the Devil, ‘cause she could hear that loud rock music, you know. The stuff where you play the records backwards and it’s got some sort of ooga-booga about the Devil on it. And she started praying, and darn if they didn’t move. Just up and moved six months later, and she said it was on account of her praying all the time. The Lord heard her prayers, and those Hell’s Angels just up and moved.”
Right. Up and moved six months later. I wondered if Bob would do me the favor of kicking my butt around the camper a few times.
In the middle of an apple-pie recipe, Sam returned. He had on his coat; it sagged badly. He had on a different shirt, and though it was in pretty tough shape, it did look better than the other one. Even the tie was painted on better. It must have been the shirt he used for Christmas because the tie was bright red.
Mable went behind the curtain then to do “a little touchin’ up,” and Sam sat down behind the steering wheel and looked at me like a loving, but stern father.
“Son, I want you to know that now, no matter what happens, you are in the hands of the Lord. If something really ugly should happen to you . . . if a ton of bricks fell out of the sky and crushed you flatter than a pie pan, you’d be one with the Lord. He’s waiting on you, son. Waiting for you to join His kingdom. What do you think of that?”
“It’s a comfort,” I said. I wondered if Bob would loan me his shotgun so I could shoot myself. I had been a bean head to see anything wonderful about these people and their way of life. The truth was I was going to die, and there wasn’t any heaven to go to. Unless it was some sort of B-string heaven for extras in bad movies. That’s what this all had to be. A bad movie.
When Mable came back she had on a long overcoat, and I could tell the pockets were filled with something, but I had no idea what.
“Well, how do I look?” she asked Sam cheerfully.
“Like a million dollars, sugarbunch, like a million dollars.” He smiled at her, then looked at the hourglass. “Almost time. I got to go next door and tap on Deacon Cecil’s car window, get him to get everybody ready for tonight’s services. You’re gonna like this, son. It’s gonna put you straight with God.”
I was beginning to doubt that. If these were God’s chosen people, He had poor taste, and if I wanted in with them, then I had even poorer taste. But as it stood, in for a penny, in for a pound. It wasn’t like I had a pressing engagement elsewhere, but I was beginning to plan one. Maybe Bob would like the idea. We could maybe find a hose somewhere and run the exhaust fumes into the back of the camper. Just go to sleep and not wake up. It sure seemed like a good proposition to me.
Sam got up and I let him pass by me and out the door to get Deacon Cecil. When he was gone, Mable shrugged and said, “Well, here we are.”
She told me a story about how she’d won a baking contest in Gladewater, Texas, once, and by then Sam was back.
“Are things ready?” Mable asked.
“Ready,” he said, and looked at me and smiled.
I smiled back.
We went out of the bus, and as we walked, Sam put his arm around my shoulders and told me about the Kingdom of Heaven. None of it was particularly inspiring. The smell from his armpit kept my mind off what he was saying and made me woozy.
As we neared the selected spot, I could see a number of the Christians strutting rapidly toward it. They really seemed worked up and excited this time, like they’d just arrived at the company picnic.
On the other hand, I was considerably less than worked up. My entire religious experiment so far had been a vast disappointment. Sort of like when I found out my pet gerbil wouldn’t live forever, and later, after I’d cleaned the little turds out of his cage for what seemed like an enormous period of time, thought the little fucker would never die.
When we were all ga
thered there, Sam introduced me as a “boy who wants to join God,” and the others told me how nice that was, and a girl who might have been pretty, had she not been so thin and her hair so greasy, said, “A fresh one, huh?”
“You know,” Mable said, looking up at the lightning flashing across the blackness, “this reminds me of when we used to camp out, and sometimes it looked like it was going to rain. And we’d build us a big fire anyway, and we’d take some coat hangers and straighten them out and roast wienies over the fire. It was so much fun. We’d just let them cook until they were black, and they tasted so good. That just don’t make sense really, ‘cause if you burn them at home they aren’t any good at all, but out there on an open fire you can cook them black as a nigger, and they’re just as fine as they can be.”
“We’ll start the services with a little round of prayer.” Sam said, “then we’ll have communion.”
At mention of the word “communion,” a collective sigh went up from the crowd. These were some communion-loving folks. I remembered the sighs from the Popcorn King’s followers when they were eating the results of his vomit. There hadn’t been a lot of difference in sounds.
“God,” Sam said, “you sure have allowed some odd things here. In fact, I would say you have outdone yourself. But if that’s your will, that’s it. Still, sure would like to know the why of it . . . We also have this young fella amongst us, just baptized and craving the Lord, and we thought we’d bring him to you . . . It would certainly be nice if you’d do something to that old Popcorn King, by the way. Like maybe kill him. And it wouldn’t hurt my feelings, or the feelings of anyone here, if you’d make this black mess go away and give us back our highway and things. Amen—”
“Amen,” said the crowd.
“Bad as things is,” Mable whispered to me, “you got to be thankful. Things will work out, I know they will. I had a cousin, her name was Frances, and she didn’t have good thoughts on nothing or nobody, and she got this rash on her foot and it got infected, and she wouldn’t do nothing but wear this old sock on it, day in, day out. It just stunk something awful. I’d say to her, ‘Frances, you need to go and pour you some chemicals on that thing. It’s done gone and got infected.’ But you know, she wouldn’t listen, and her foot got so infected they had to cut it off. Had a foot one day, next she didn’t. Just had this little stub and they got this leather thing they put over it, and she had to put on this artificial foot, and she’d pull a stocking over that and she could slip a shoe on, you know, and it looked almost real. But when she walked, she walked something like this.” She showed me how her cousin Frances walked. The congregation and Sam had stopped to look at her, but she didn’t seem to notice. She did a sort of stiff step with one foot and dragged the other after it. “That’s how she looked. And there’s some little ole mean kids that live down the block from her, and they’d get up behind her when she was walking to the store, and they’d all walk like her.” She showed me the walk in more exaggerated form. “It was just like a bunch of crippled ducks following their ole crippled mama. They’d been my kids I’d have worn their little hind ends out so bad they couldn’t have sat down for a week. But the reason she got her foot rotted off like that and got mocked by them children is because she didn’t have no faith and doesn’t look on the bright side of things. God keeps score on them kind, you can bet he does.”
“Mable,” Sam said patiently, “if you’re through with the story about your cousin’s rotting foot, we’d like to continue.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” said Mable. “Don’t you pay me no never mind. Ya’ll just go right on with your rat killing and I’ll hush and listen.”
“That would be nice,” Sam said.
Then came the sermon. It had a lot of storm clouds, sinners, fire and brimstone and the work of the Devil in it. Sam hopped around and waved his arms a lot. But somehow it wasn’t very exciting. There were quite a few references to plumbing and painting and a parable about a little girl that got hit by a truck, which I couldn’t seem to work into the rest of the sermon or find the point of.
A man beside me leaned over to another and said, “I’m really sick of this crap.”
“It’s a thing to get through,” the other man said.
Finally Sam’s sermon sort of petered out, like maybe he couldn’t keep it on his mind anymore. He said “amen” and called his flock to him. This was the huddle I’d seen, and Mable put her arm around me and pushed me toward it. In the huddle it was hot and full of sweaty pits, unwashed clothes and bad breath; all this ganged up on me and I felt dizzy and weak, and before I knew it, I was in the center of the huddle and hands were touching me, then suddenly Sam stepped forward and kicked my feet out from under me. I went down hard and hit my head, tried to rise, but Sam shoved me down with his foot, and the next thing I know there’s two guys holding my arms, and the girl with the greasy hair has one of my legs and Mable has the other.
“What in hell are you doing?” I yelled.
“Communion,” Sam said. He took a tin of sardines out of his rumpled coat, and that made me aware suddenly of what was filling that shabby coat of Mable’s. More sardine tins. “We been sharing these with the congregation,” Sam said. “Folks have been real nice about it too, especially since they know I got the bus rigged up with a bomb, and they mess where they ain’t supposed to be messin’ when we’re away from there, and BLAM!”
“That’s got nothing to do with me . . . Tell these people to let me go.”
“It’s got everything to do with you. We also drink a little of each other’s blood.”
“Like this,” Mable said, and she put her knee over my ankle to hold me down and produced a penknife from the pocket of her coat. She opened it smoothly and drew it across her palm. A line of blood appeared there and she held her hand up without looking and a man who was standing above her grabbed it and put his mouth to the wound and sucked. He trembled he was so excited. Mable’s tongue worked from one corner of her mouth to the other and her eyes closed.
A man in the crowd began speaking softly. “Yeah, brother, get it, get it, go, go.”
“Oh yes,” Mable said, “Oh yes, yes, yes. Suck, suck, oh God in Heaven, suck, yes, oh yes.”
Then other knives and razors flashed and flesh was opened and mouths were pleased. It sounded like a convention of leeches, or an orgy—or, to be more precise, both.
Sam squatted down close to my face. There was blood on his lips. “You see,” he said, patting my chest. “We made a pact. We wouldn’t let nobody else in. We would convert them if they wanted, but they couldn’t join us, and we’d eliminate competition. It’s a tough thing to do, but the Lord moves in mysterious ways his miracles to perform . . . and food lasts longer this way.”
A man took Mable’s place holding my leg and she inched down to me and held the penknife where I could see it. “And we have to take advantage of any food that comes our way,” she said. “It would be sinful to waste . . . and we’ve had our eyes on you and your friend for a while.”
“We just didn’t want to get shot,” Sam said. “Your pal never seems to leave his shotgun.”
“But you’re Christians,” I said.
“That we are,” Sam said, “and that should make you feel proud and special. You’ll be with God in Heaven in a short time now. He’ll embrace you and—”
“Then why don’t you go join him,” I said. “You’re holier than me, you should go first.”
Sam smiled. “It isn’t my time.”
“It’s a little thing,” Mable said. “Nothing to it, really. We got to do this thing, and you’ve got to accept it . . . And this here knife may be small, but it’s sharp. It won’t hurt much. They say the blood goes out of you fast when it’s done right, that you just get terrible sleepy, then it’s all over. I’ve cut many a hog’s throat in my day, and though couldn’t none of them tell me if it was sleepy or not, they seemed to go pretty peaceful, wouldn’t you say, Sam?”
“I would,” Sam said.
“But I
’m no hog,” I said.
“Cut the gab,” a man said, and he dropped a rusty looking hubcap beside my head; it clanged, rattled, stopped.
“Turn him,” Sam said.
The two holding my legs let go, and the men who had my arms flipped me onto my knees, pulled my arms back so hard behind my back my shoulder blades met. They pushed me forward so that my face was over the hubcap.
“Won’t none of you waste,” Mable said. “I thought you’d like to know that. We’ll take the blood to drink, then we’ll have us a little ole cookout with the rest of you.”
“Mable can cook like the dickens; don’t matter what it is, she can cook it.”
The greasy-haired girl who had held one of my legs earlier came around and bent down to look me in the face. “I’m gonna love you, sugar. I’m gonna just love you to death. Gonna wrap my lips around you, and chew and chew and chew.”
“Get on with it, for Pete’s sake,” the man who had dropped the hubcap said.
Mable grabbed my hair. “Just think about something pleasant, like good ole turnip greens and black-eyed peas. It’ll be over quick-like.”
I closed my eyes, but I didn’t think of turnip greens and black-eyed peas. I tried to remember how things were before the drive-in, but nothing would come. There was only the dark behind my eyelids, the sound of all those hungry Christians breathing, the smell of their bodies. Mable lifted my head more to expose my neck. I hoped it would be quick and that I would not have to hear my blood draining into the hubcap for very long.
And just when I expected to feel the blade, there was an explosion, a thud in the hubcap and I was warmly wet from chin to forehead.
PART THREE
THE ORBIT MUST DIE
Death and Destruction and School Bus-Fu
1
I thought my throat had been cut and the blood from the wound had sprayed my face, and that simultaneously there had been a loud clap of thunder, though it didn’t sound right, not even for the artificial thunder of the drive-in.
The Complete Drive-In Page 12