The Blood of the Lamb

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Ames and Pierce both looked at him like he’d just spit a lizard out of his mouth.

  “Reverend Cooper,” said Ames, taking off his glasses in a practiced gesture of deference and humility, then making a big deal of refitting them to his head, “Reverend, that was no trick.” Though his voice shook, he spoke with conviction.

  “Bullshit, boy! That was movie stuff!”

  “I’ve put the tape through the digital analyzer, Reverend,” said Ames.

  “You’re tryin’ to tell me that’s for real!” Freemason knocked back the rest of the Maker’s Mark.

  “That’s what he’s tellin’ you, Mason,” said Pierce. “And I sat here and watched him check that tape out. Believe me, it’s as clean as the band on a nigger’s new hat.”

  Freemason laughed. “That’s ridiculous! Ain’t no man walks through the fire like that! It’s a yankee, bullstuffin’ trick, I’m tellin’ you!”

  “You saw how he healed that girl,” said Pierce, taking a sip from his own glass of bourbon. He barked out a short laugh. “Heal, hell! He brought her back to life, he did!”

  “Don’t talk that kind of crap around me!” screamed Cooper. “Ain’t nobody comes back from the dead! And nobody brings ’em back neither!”

  “Uh, Reverend,” said Pierce, “I think there was one fella who did a pretty good job on both counts…”

  “Don’t get wise with me,” said Freemason. “This is some kind of publicity stunt, some kind of gag…”

  “Looked pretty good to me,” said Ames. “Actually, it looked damned good.”

  “It looks to me,” said Cooper, “like somebody is tryin’ awfully hard to get hisself in the news.”

  “What for?” asked Pierce.

  “To get known! Why the hell does anybody do it?!” Freemason reached for the bottle, poured another few fingers, knocked back half in one draught. “Fame! Goddamned fame is what this New York boy’s lookin’ for!”

  “How do you know that?” asked Ames.

  “Because,” said Preston J. Pierce, nervously rubbing his hands together, “fame is power. And power begets wealth. Which in turn begets more power.”

  Cooper smiled. “Amen to that, brother.” He spoke his thoughts aloud. “I was wonderin’ why every time there’s a story on this Carenza character, it just happens to be reported by Miss Marion Windsor. And if she’s a local reporter from New York City, then what in all the Bible’s books is she doin’ in Illinois in the middle of the night?”

  Pierce ran his palm over his nearly bald head. It was an old, twitchy habit. “That does make it all smell kind of fishy…”

  “Damn straight.” Freemason sipped from his tumbler this time. Wouldn’t do to be gettin’ sloshed when he had some serious ponderin’ to do. “We got to find out who that boy is.”

  Cooper’s long associations with charlatans and snake-oil salesmen made him extra-sensitive to a scam. Though everything he’d seen so far confirmed that something odd was happening, he wasn’t sure it was as much of a flim-flam as he wanted his boys to believe.

  In fact, when Freemason reflected on Carenza’s actions, he got a good case of the creeps, like when he was a kid and he’d look down the well at his Aunt Daisy’s farm, down past the winch and the bucket into that dank, circular darkness, wondering what kind of holy terror lived beneath the black water. He knew there was something terrible waitin’ to get him, hopin’ he’d fall into the well. The whole time he was growin’ up, he figured the worst thing that could ever happen to him would be to take the drop into that well.

  The memory made him shudder slightly. He could almost see that terrible blackness.

  “What you got in mind?” asked Pierce.

  Freemason leaned back in his chair, looked up, scrutinizing the ceiling. “Call Freddie Bevins. Tell him I got a job for him.”

  Pierce nodded. “Do you want him to come in and talk about it in person?”

  “Absolutely. This ain’t no divorce work. This is serious business.”

  “When do you want him here?”

  “First thing in the morning—and tell him to clear his schedule. Until further notice, he belongs to me.” Freemason stood up. The sudden motion gave him a slight rush. He waited till the brief dizziness passed, then headed for the door.

  “Nice work, boys,” he said casually. “Especially you, Ames.”

  The video engineer smiled, adjusted his glasses. “You bet, Reverend. Thanks.”

  As Freemason left the room, the unsteadiness returned. He couldn’t tell whether it was physical or mental, but he felt cut loose from everything familiar and potent in his life. Funny how things could change so fast. Less than an hour ago he’d been doing his personal brand of aerobics with the young redhead, but right now, he couldn’t get it up if you blew compressed air up his ass.

  He walked down the corridor that connected the east wing with the residential sections of the mansion. Gilt-edged paintings graced the walls. Crystal chandeliers hung from the high ceilings. The mansion was a palace built for his pleasure, and he usually derived great satisfaction from thinking about how far he’d come in life.

  But that New York boy had him spooked—no gettin’ around it.

  Maybe he’d go down and see his Daddy. The old man was gettin’ kinda shaky, but he still had his wits, and he’d never given Freemason a bit of bad advice.

  Zachary Stewart Cooper had a suite of rooms on the mansion’s first floor. Freemason had provided him with his own staff of servants, a twenty-four-hour complement of nurses, and every creature comfort a man could ever wish for. Freemason considered it an honor to be able to take care of his father so well. All children, he believed, were in debt to their parents, and were obligated to take care of the old folks. And that wasn’t no Satellite Tabernacle bull—Freemason truly believed it, in his heart of hearts. Shouldn’t be no need of that Social Security nonsense. Nothin’ but a fancy Ponzi scheme anyway.

  He knocked on the door to Daddy’s suite. A video camera checked him out and his father’s voice crackled through a hidden speaker.

  “That you, son?”

  “Sure is, Daddy. I need to see you.”

  A soft digital chime played the first few bars of “Dixie,” and the door unlocked electronically. Freemason entered the foyer, passed through the living room, where a black nurse sat reading a magazine, and walked down a short hallway to the large bedroom where Zachary Cooper did most of his living.

  The old man had taken a fierce interest in video technology. His bedroom was outfitted with every conceivable type of equipment in the free world. From the comfort and warmth of his waterbed, Daddy Cooper could analyze, digitize, or colorize. He could perform audio mixes, video FX, dubs, assemblies, or anything else he could think of. He amused himself endlessly by creating his own video concoctions. Predictably, his earliest efforts were preoccupied with sex, but he now aspired to create True Art, and his work grew progressively more abstract, personal, and impenetrable.

  All this from a man who had spent forty years on the road, the ultimate traveling salesman. Zachary Stewart Cooper could sell anything to anybody. Freemason’s earliest memories of his father were of a round-shouldered man in ill-fitting suits and wide, colorful ties. The dominant image was Daddy humping a sample case only slightly, smaller than a steamer trunk in and out a ’54 Chevrolet DeLuxe Coupe. The old man had started out working for the Fuller Brush Company, spending weeks at a time traveling through Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. Once in a while, on certain Sundays, that Chevy would roll up the driveway, and a guy in a baggy suit would jump out, carrying gifts for his wife and his little boy.

  He always brought those big rainbow-swirl lollipops and balsa wood Testors airplanes, and once he’d handed over a pair of simulated pearl-handled chrome toy six-guns with real leather holsters. For Mamma, there were silk stockings and slips, department store perfumes, and boxes of peanut brittle from Stuckey’s.

  Freemason used to love those Sundays, especially during th
e Alabama summers when the trees were green and the lemonade was cool and yellow on the front porch. Seeing the door to that old Chevy swing open used to get his heart jumpin’ like a jukebox. It had been a different story for Mamma, though. Half-drunk all the time, she never seemed to get too excited when Daddy’d get home.

  It seemed like all they’d ever do was fight, and as Freemason got older, he started to understand why Daddy stayed on the road most of the time. That and the money, of course. Daddy worked hard and he worked long; he made a decent buck. But it wasn’t until he went into business for himself, and started selling his own company’s Bible door-to-door, that he made real money. He lugged that Bible from one little town to another all over the South.

  A million towns and a million dollars.

  Daddy got rich, Mamma died of cirrhosis, and Freemason realized there was a passel of money to be made in the religion business.

  So by the time young Cooper started wearing a man’s clothes, the Bible company had given birth to a Church. Freemason knew the best way to spread the word and pick up new Church members was to advertise. He cut a deal with a local radio station in Bessemet and the Church of the Holy Radio Tabernacle burst upon the airways.

  That, plus his inherited talent for talkin’ (his father had always boasted that Freemason could “talk the balls off a bull”), made the self-ordained Reverend Freemason Cooper a regional star in the religious firmament. The natural progression to television, first locally and then nationally on the indie/syndie circuit, had made Zachary’s first million look like pocket change. Then came the satellite and the superstations. After weathering the scandals of the late eighties, the surviving telesat churches had become stronger than ever as the world careened toward the end of the century. And lounging at the top of the heap was none other than the Church of the Holy Satellite Tabernacle, hallelujah, praise the Lord, and amen, brother.

  Freemason blinked his eyes and looked at the old man seated in the middle of a circular bed. Like a Gandhi in pajamas, Daddy was surrounded by remote controls, consoles, and keyboards. The opposite wall looked like the interior of an edit suite. Monitors displayed a variety of moving and frozen images. It was a vast electronic palette from which Daddy could choose and create.

  “Hello, son,” said the old man, barely looking up from his toys. “What’s up…? Besides your dick, that is.”

  Daddy laughed at his own joke, stopped when he noticed the serious expression on Freemason’s face.

  “I need your advice, Daddy. Couple things on my mind.”

  The old man pushed his toys to the side of the bed, leaned back against his pillows. He took a hit of oxygen, looked at his son. “Take a shot, son. I’m ready.”

  “Have you been watchin’ the news lately?”

  Zachary Cooper smiled. “Peter Carenza.”

  Freemason couldn’t hide his surprise. Ninety-one and still no moss growing under his ass. “How did you know?”

  “Just a feelin’.” The smile widened into a grin.

  “Well. Daddy, what’re you makin’ out of all this?”

  The old man shrugged. It was a long-practiced, beautifully enacted gesture. “It’s still too early to tell.”

  “My question is: who is this guy?”

  Daddy laughed. “Don’t you know?”

  “Come on. Daddy!”

  “Well, either he is, or he ain’t, right?”

  Freemason didn’t answer right away. Hearing his father verbalize the solitary fear that had been rattlin’ around inside his head like a pea in a gourd had stunned him for a moment.

  “Yeah,” said Freemason, finally. “And either way. Daddy, I’d say we have a few plans to make.”

  Daddy laughed. “You bet yer ass, sonny. You bet yer ass we do.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Richview, Illinois—Carenza

  * * *

  November 25, 1998

  “Peter, you’ve really done it this time,” said Daniel Ellington. He was sitting at the kitchen table of a Winnebago. The spacious RV had been given to Peter by Herman Becker, father of the resurrected Amanda and owner of several car dealerships in St. Louis. The Winnebago rested on the acreage of George Affholter, a farmer whose fatal injuries had been healed as Peter bent over him on the hard asphalt of Interstate 64.

  Peter sat across the table, sipping a cup of coffee.

  “Yes, I guess I have,” he said with a boyish grin on his face.

  “How long are you going to keep this up?” asked Daniel. “This mobile, guerrilla ministry?”

  “I never thought of it like that,” Peter said with a chuckle, “but you know, it has a nice ring to it. Guerrilla ministry—I like that.”

  He peeked through the slatted blinds of the window, amazed at what he saw.

  Thousands of people surrounded the Winnebago, in every direction. Some had set up tents; others sat in the open, on blankets; more just stood by. Their cars and other vehicles were scattered about Affholter’s property like carelessly tossed toys. It looked like the first stages of a monster rock concert, or a demonstration on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

  The thrum of the excited crowd had become a constant background noise. They’d been out there for hours. Most of them were from the small towns outside of St. Louis, some from the city itself. Mixed in were media crews from various radio and TV stations. Marion was out there somewhere, trying to deal with them and with the newspaper and magazine journalists who were also beginning to swarm about. Despite the early autumn coolness in the air, there were the beginnings of a carnival atmosphere.

  “Look at this, Daniel,” Peter said. “More hucksters. Inevitable I guess.”

  His friend carefully peered through the blinds to see a construction site lunch-wagon swinging down its panels. It was in competition with a two-wheeled hot dog stand, a soft ice cream truck, and the peanut and popcorn peddlers hawking their way through the crowd like vendors at a ballgame.

  “Well,” said Daniel. “It was either that or we’re going to have to drag out the loaves and fishes, right?”

  Peter smiled. “Don’t tempt me, Daniel.”

  He meant it as a joke, but his friend was not laughing. In fact Daniel looked at him more seriously than Peter could ever remember.

  “You, know,” said Daniel, “that’s not really funny. None of this is.”

  Peter knew what his friend was getting at. “Funny?” he said, looking for an instant into Daniel’s eyes, and then into the black depths of his coffee mug. “I guess not. Sometimes I feel like I’m following some kind of script, some kind of preordained plan.”

  “That’s crazy, Peter.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know what to think.”

  Daniel left the table to get a fresh pour of coffee, and Peter used the moment to reflect on their time on the road. Though he and Daniel and Marion had held strategy sessions (which sometimes included the slightly whacked-out input of Billy and Laureen), Peter wasn’t totally comfortable with his new public image.

  Weeks ago, when Father Francesco and his cronies had told Peter the whole story, he felt outraged. His whole life had been a sham, based on a past that was a lie.

  But after they’d tried to strong-arm him back to Rome, after they’d tortured Dan, Peter had decided that the only way to defend himself was to attack, face them down in the middle of the street. High noon and all that. And that meant publicity.

  After the auto factory riot, he’d consulted with Dan and Marion. They agreed that he should go public—and events accelerated faster than any of them imagined.

  “You know, there’s one thing we never seem to talk about,” said Dan as he returned to the table.

  “What’s that?”

  “Who are you, Peter? Are you Christ? Are you the Son of God?” Dan’s tangled emotions poured out. “I mean, should I be down on my knees before you? Are you the One I’ve been praying to all my life?”

  “Daniel…” He didn’t know what to say.

  Daniel put his hands to the sides
of his head as though trying to suppress the pain of a terrible headache. He looked away from Peter, staring at the laminated, fake wood of the kitchen cabinets.

  “I think that’s what I’m trying to find out for myself, Dan.” Peter stood, moved away from his friend. “I mean, I don’t feel like God, you know? I don’t feel any different than I ever have. I feel like plain old Peter Carenza.”

  “But…?” prompted Daniel.

  “But my life is completely different. Do you know that I haven’t said Mass once since we left New York? Not once! It still feels unnatural to be without that daily ritual.”

  Daniel grinned sadly. “I know. I have the same problem.”

  “Really?” Peter felt better, knowing his lack of attention to his vows was not so solitary. “We’ve been so busy…It’s like there’s a little room, deep down in the center of my soul, that’s been locked up all my life. What I learned in Rome threw back the bolt—and now that the door’s swung open, I know I can never close it again. The light shining out of that room is going to light my way for the rest of my life.”

  “Do you feel that you’re moving closer to that little room?” asked Daniel. “Are you going to be able to look through the door and see where that light’s coming from?”

  “I hope so. I feel like I’m moving toward it inexorably. All the time.”

  Daniel drew in a breath, held it for a moment. “All right, how’s this? What if you decide, or discover, or accept—or whatever—that you are the Son of God? What then? Have you thought about that?”

  “Not as much as I should, I guess.” Peter paused to sip his now-cooled coffee. “It makes me uncomfortable.”

  Daniel nodded. “I can believe that. But where do we go from here?”

  “Well, we’ve agreed that we’ve started something important out here. I’ve always been very popular with people. Congregations have always liked me. So we continue, and I keep doing the work I’ve always done.”

  “Okay, but what about everything you and I were taught? What we believe?” Daniel began to pace within the confines of the vehicle, his face a portrait of concern, anxiety.