The Book of Murdock

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Denver. Cheyenne. Omaha. Wherever the church sent me, there he was. For years I thought he was an imp sent to bedevil me, but I knew nothing then of the tent-show circuit. I doubt he’s overlooked a major population center or a tin-pan mining camp since he answered the Call. If he were Catholic he’d be a cardinal by now.”

  “What church is he with?”

  “Southern Baptist.”

  That was the last answer I wanted, because I’d already suspected the worst, and the presence in a dale fifty feet beyond the tent of an acre of standing water did nothing to cheer me. It was an old buffalo wallow, from its size as ancient as the veins of gold that remained in the mountains, and worn into a perfect bowl by a thousand dead shaggies. Jagged panes of ice ringed the edge like painted glass.

  I waited until we’d found a place among the other horses and vehicles and stepped down. “If you think I’m going in that frozen puddle,” I said, “you’ve had too much traffic with miracles. I’ll take my chances with the lake of fire.”

  He let the lines drop to the ground. It was a livery animal and wouldn’t wander away from others of its kind. “It’s just water. Don’t tell me you’ve never crossed a river in colder weather than this.”

  “Then I had something worth getting to on the other side.”

  “Not like what’s waiting for you this time.”

  “Just because you taught me to recite a few columns of verse doesn’t mean you made me a believer.”

  He turned toward me. The shadow of his hat brim drew a mask around his washed-out blue eyes without concealing them; they seemed to glow like phosphor, but that’s an old mesmerist’s trick, and most spiritual counselors are students of the art. “Man is conceived in sin, and piles transgression upon transgression all the days of his life. The earth is nine parts water. Nine times nine would not begin to pale the stain of the first; not that brackish pond, and certainly not the paltry few drops the priests of my church sprinkle in a man’s face, as if it came sixty dollars the barrel, and declare him cleansed. The Blood of the Lamb is a rare vintage and cannot be bought with Latin. The ceremony is a charming fraud, like confession, and like confession it fools none but fools. But it is the beginning of hope.”

  “Hope of what, salvation?”

  “That’s faith. Faith requires a higher power. Hope is the belief that you can reverse the course of your own descent. It’s the only mortal thing the devil fears, or he would not banish it at his gate. It involves free will, which will always be the enemy of him who would throw bad after bad. I will turn a faithless man out into the world to carry the Word, I am that corrupt, but I will spend eternity in limbo before I turn out a creature without hope to poison the hearts of my brothers.”

  “So religion is free will. I thought it was the opposite.”

  “You thought nothing until God placed you in my charge.”

  “Judge Blackthorne said I was hopeless. I said he was wrong.”

  “Prove it.”

  I looked from him to the wallow, which was easier to regard even with icicles bending the reeds in the center. Then I unshipped the Deane-Adams and gave it to him along with my wallet and the badge of office. Water does them no good, holy or no.

  FIVE

  From the chill mountain air we passed through the open flap into a Turkish bath. Barrel stoves glowed at both ends of the tent, and with the rows of folding chairs all occupied and standees pressed together like kernels of corn at the back, the air was close and sultry and stank heavily of unwashed wool. Just inside the entrance an articulated skeleton in new overalls and a homespun shirt handed us each a slim hymnal bound in dirty green cloth and a sheet of coarse paper printed with smudged black letters:

  DR. L. L. LITTLE’S TRAVELING TABERNACLE

  Lawrence Lazarus Little, D.D., officiating

  “A little leaven leaventh the whole lump.”

  —Galatians 5:6

  Beneath was a calendar scheduling Little’s travels throughout the spring and summer of the Year of Our Lord 1884.

  “He has a following,” Griffin said. “Some of the devoted trail him from place to place to hear the same sermons again and again. The theory seems to be that the more you’re preached at, the holier your glow in the eyes of God. Watch.”

  The man Little was short but disproportionately wide through the trunk, an oak barrel on squat legs with long arms furred from the backs of his hands to the insides of his elbows, where the roll of his striped shirtsleeves prevented me from seeing how far up the hair grew; the fact that it sprouted again from his spread collar and tangled with his beard suggested he’d resemble a baboon when stripped. As we watched, he made his way down the aisle between the rows of chairs and penetrated the rows themselves, snatching sweaty sheets of paper from hands thrust at him, marking them with a stump of orange pencil, and returning them. “Bless you, brother, bless you, sister, bless you, child.” The rolling voice spread benediction like a honey wagon.

  Griffin shouted into my ear; the din of voices calling for Little’s attention was palpable. “He scratches his initials beside the present location on the programme, like a conductor punching tickets. All you need do to pass through the heavenly gate is present it with all the places marked off. That’s the assumption, in any case. He’s far too clever to suggest it himself.”

  I said nothing, sparing my throat. I’d seen Edwin Booth signing autographs for a similarly frantic mob outside a theater in St. Louis. The spectacle of a man of the cloth being treated the same as a celebrated actor was new in my experience.

  Eventually—to mortal groans from those clamoring in the back rows—the minister broke off his pilgrimage and trotted back up the aisle to a low platform erected of green lumber at the front of the tent, illuminated by a pair of barn lanterns strung from poles. Gripping a hymnal in one thistled fist he bade the congregation turn to page forty-three. Griffin nudged me and we sang, “Father, We Come to Thee,” with Little’s massy bass soaring above all. When the last straggler finished, he exchanged the hymnal for a much larger book resting on a straightback chair missing a rung and held the object high above his head. It was a Montgomery Ward & Co. catalogue, bound in blue paper with an engraving of the firm’s Chicago headquarters on the front.

  Knowing laughter greeted this gesture, as at the appearance of a favorite comic act.

  “Satan’s wish book,” Griffin said; “this is a masterpiece.”

  I glanced at his clean profile, dry as flax in the sodden heat. I couldn’t tell if he was being ironic.

  “I see by your reaction you’re all familiar with this object,” Little said, beginning quietly; for with hasty shushings the crowd had fallen silent but for the odd nervous cough. “It is a miracle of our century: three hundred pages of text and lifelike illustrations offering more than thirty thousand items of merchandise for sale at competitive prices, from a sterling silver button hook for ninety-eight cents to a parlor grand piano for ninety-eight dollars, not including shipping and handling.” (Laughter.) “It is possible, thanks to the foresight and American-style enterprise of Mr. Aaron Montgomery Ward of Chicago, Illinois, to purchase a heavy three-seat full platform wagon, a suit of clothes, a Remington New Model double-barrel shotgun, and seventy-two dozen shirt buttons without stirring from the chair beside your hearth. A wish book, my dear late wife called it.” (Sympathetic murmurs.) “In short, my friends, there is nothing worldly that a man or woman with the necessary wherewithal may not obtain without so much as changing from a pair of comfortable house slippers into street shoes.” (Nods and glances.) “We are fortunate, you and I, to live in such a society.”

  WHAM! With a sudden arcing flash of his arm, he cast the heavy volume to the floorboards at his feet. Even those who obviously had been witness to the same action on previous occasions jumped in their seats; the stout middle-aged woman standing next to me grasped my upper arm, letting go with a hurried whisper of apology. I said something polite back. I was somewhat shaken myself.

  “There is anoth
er kind of wish book, my friends; and I do not refer to competing sources issued by Mr. Ward’s Johnny-come-lately colleagues back East, but to the temptations stocked by our Savior’s rival down South.” (Uneasy chuckles.) “Mind you, Satan’s wish book is not comprised of paper and ink. The text and illustrations are written in fire and blood, and the prices are kept secret until the bill comes due. It is issued by the old established concern of Pride, Lust, Covetousness, Wrath, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth, and it is available on any public street corner for the unwary to browse at leisure.

  “The greedy man who would fill his purse with gold while his neighbor goes hungry shall, when the creditor calls, be fitted with a pack containing four hundred times four hundred troy ounces to bear upon his back four hundred times four hundred miles, and four hundred times four hundred more, until the end of all things;

  “The vain woman whose waist cannot be made too small that she may corrupt weak men shall, when the creditor calls, don a corset fashioned from barbed wire, a strand wound round a wheel, and that wheel spun, constricting her middle and forcing her innards into her limbs through eternity;

  “The lazy man who lingers abed, neglecting the Lord’s honest labor, shall, when the creditor calls, be nailed to a cot of hard rock maple and grow running sores of everlasting agony;

  “The satyr who defiles virgins shall, when the creditor calls, be flung among harpies and ravished with truncheons of iron heated red in the fires of the furnace;

  “The child who covets his playmate’s catapult, so that he would make away with it without asking leave, shall, when the creditor calls, be himself placed in a sling and shot into the devil’s own dung heap, ever and anon;

  “The wife of simple circumstances with a good and devoted husband, who looks with jealous eyes upon her neighbor’s hired girl, shall, when the creditor calls, wait on torn hands and bleeding knees upon Beelzebub’s slut, who spares not the scourge, until the oceans boil and the sun is like unto a lump of ice;

  “Finally, the man who lays about his family with his fists when no fault is theirs shall, when the creditor calls, be made a bitten dog which is starved, and spat upon, and soils itself when kicked, and wallows in its unholy filth until Saint Peter whistles.

  “These are the prices demanded for the wares advertised in Satan’s wish book: everlasting misery, eternal pain, humiliation without end. Let it never be said that the old established concern of Pride, Lust, Covetousness, Wrath, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth failed to provide full customer satisfaction.

  “Turn now to page ninety-eight.”

  We were halfway through “Memories of Galilee” before anyone at ground level could direct enough attention to the lyrics to give them conviction, such was the effect of the sermon. Little himself, by going straight to the hymn without pausing, appeared to hold any sort of reaction in small regard. It was grand showmanship; he might have been preaching to none but himself. The impression was of a man who cared less for personal glory than for his responsibility to his master. Few actors would have taken the chance, and no politician.

  I said something along those lines to Griffin after the song ended. He nodded without turning his head. “It’s like needing perfect pitch to sing deliberately off-key. Only a man who’s passionately in love with himself could manage to appear so humble.”

  He asked what I’d thought of the sermon. I said, “It’s just about the crudest thing I ever heard, but I was sorry when it ended.”

  “It’s requested more often than his ‘Express Train to Hell.’ He’s in danger of wearing it out. I don’t believe he’s changed a word in six years.”

  “I doubt I can touch it, even if I took it for myself.”

  “Don’t try. What works under canvas won’t play under board-and-batten. These people come expecting a bonfire, not a hearth at which to warm their hands.”

  “Then why did you bring me, apart from the baptism? Or is that the only reason?”

  “You could be baptized in any place of worship, although I concede that doing so under less than ideal conditions appealed to me as punishment for your procrastination. I wanted you to see at firsthand that it’s possible for a man who has no faith to inspire belief in others. I hardly expect you to rise to Lawrence Little’s station, but had you not seen him in full cry, your doubts might have condemned you to failure.”

  “Little’s a charlatan?” We’d been conversing in murmurs; I dropped mine to a whisper. The stout woman next to me was sending scowls my way.

  “He didn’t start out a fraud or he’d never have been ordained. However, I know when bombast has taken the place of devotion. He’s been making that substitution as long as I’ve been attending his circus.”

  “It seemed genuine to me.”

  “That’s because you have not stood where he is standing, mouthing the words that come from your head and not your heart.”

  Just then the collection plate came around. It was a hammered copper bowl with wooden handles. When we finished contributing and passed it on, the set of Griffin’s jaw told me that path of conversation was closed.

  At length the services ended and the baptisms began. A flap of canvas had been stitched to either side of the tent at the ends of the platform to create makeshift dressing rooms for men and women, and I joined a line. Griffin touched my arm. “You needn’t. There are more accommodating places.”

  “It’s hot as hell anyway,” I said.

  “That’s the intention.”

  When my turn came I changed into a loose gown of unbleached muslin that reached to my ankles and gave my feet to a shapeless pair of shoes made from stiff uncured cowhide, with inner soles that felt like corrugated iron. I had my choice from a stack of gowns on a hewn bench and rows of footwear that looked uniformly uninviting, for the nippy weather outside had discouraged the less committed. I folded my clothes, put them and my boots in Griffin’s hands for safekeeping, and went out to join one of two lines separated by gender marching toward the wallow. At first, the cold air felt good on my parboiled face, but as we shuffled along in half time to the congregation singing, “Jesus Wash Me,” the sweat on my body seemed to form a jacket of ice. By the time we reached the edge of the water I was shivering and my feet felt like flagstones.

  Brother Dismas, as I’d heard Little address the bald-headed beanpole who’d greeted us inside the tent, had shed his shirt and overalls for a gown and waded out to the middle without so much as a woof when the cold water came into contact with his testicles; his breath smoked in the air. Dr. Little meanwhile stood on dry land waving a brown-backed Bible and leading the chorus of hallelujahs that greeted each immersion. He was so enthusiastic, roaring in that voice so thoroughly cured in the barrel of his chest, that no one seemed to notice or mind that he never got his feet wet. I began to think that Griffin was right about him.

  The water stung like needles when I went in, but as I pressed on, fighting to keep the gown from billowing and giving the parishioners more of a revelation than they’d come for, it clamped my legs in a vice that choked off all feeling. When I was crotch-deep, it pushed in with a surge that tore an oath from me, but if anyone heard it he must have thought I was overcome with rapture, because the reverend doctor went on encouraging the people still in line and didn’t call down the lightning.

  The good brother, who as far as I could tell was entirely hairless, with no sign that a razor had ever touched his bunched chin and sallow cheeks or had need to, laid a hand like a sashweight on my shoulder and asked me, in a high-pitched voice that twanged like a bullet off a rock, if I renounced Satan and all his works.

  I said, “Sure, but—” and then I was under; he’d slid his hand down to the small of my back, placed his other palm against my chest, and folded me backward, plunging me in and out in less than a second. When I got loose, spluttering and wiping water from my eyes, he grinned at me with two lines of pink gum. “But what?”

  “Don’t put me all the way under. I can’t swim.”

  “Nor can buffler. T
hat’s why they don’t go in more’n hock deep.” He turned to the woman who’d waded in behind me and asked her where she stood on Satan and his works.

  I foundered back toward shore, where Griffin waited with my clothes. He knew better than to say anything. In the cobbled-up men’s dressing room I tossed the gown onto the soaking heap on the ground, wiped myself down with a towel damp from other bodies, and put myself back together. When I left the tent, Griffin was standing with Dr. Little, who’d rolled down his sleeves and put on a fine black broadcloth Prince Albert with velvet facings on the lapels. The bathing party had broken up.

  “Father Griffin tells me you seek redemption.” His grip was as strong as Brother Dismas’, but not as skeletal. “You could not have chosen a better guide.”

  I looked at the former priest and got nothing back. We hadn’t discussed secrecy, but he’d spent too much time in the confessional not to know a confidence when he was told one.

  I said, “He’s opened my eyes. That was a stirring sermon.”

  He chuckled. It was as if a steam thresher were starting up in his throat. He had a bulging forehead that made him look as if he was balding, but at closer range a crop of black hair as thick and coarse as the one that covered his body grew up from a straight line and swept back in an arc to the nape of his neck. His eyes were brown, mottled like river stones, and small, even teeth flashed in his beard. “Inspiration struck in an outhouse in Creede, where a torn copy of Ward’s spring catalogue furnished an essential service. God never knocks, nor waits without.”

  Griffin shook his hand and wished him luck on the remainder of his tour. We left as a middle-aged couple stepped up to the head of the reception line. “Amazing,” said Griffin. “He took in more today than Sacred Hearts does in a month.”

  “Did you ask him if he needs a partner?”

  He stopped walking and looked at me. “That is unkind.”

  Before I could respond he strode ahead. At the buggy he took my revolver and wallet and star from under the seat and gave them to me. We drove into town without a word. At the bottom of Catholic Hill he stopped to let me down and continued. There was no lesson that day.