by Lee Smith
“Oh, I look out there, and I see every seat full, and I can feel the spirit moving already, brothers and sisters, I can feel it in this great crowd here tonight, I can feel it in this tent. I look out there and I see so many dear beloved faces, and I see new faces, too, hundreds of them, and I say unto all of you, get ready! Get ready to open up your hearts tonight, brothers and sisters, and let Jesus Christ come in. He’s waiting. He’s waiting right outside this tent tonight. Think about it, beloved. It’s up to you. It’s up to you! And now, to start the old ball rolling, let’s hear from the Holiness Youth Choir of our own Holy Pentecostal Church of God.”
The youth choir comes forward on the stage to sing two numbers, accompanied by Miss Louise Yates on the Hammond organ, but Crystal doesn’t really pay too much attention. What if she had a wreck? What if she did die in a wreck on the way home tonight? Fear shoots straight through the middle of her like a sweet sharp knife.
After the youth choir, Jubal Thacker leads them all in prayer, so white-faced and high-voiced that several women are moved to tears. Then Brother Reed is back to announce the Singing Triplets and out they come, and at first everybody is disappointed. Just from the sound of their name, you would think they would be young and cute, teenagers at the most. But these singing triplets are about forty years old. They bound out onto the stage, big hefty men with greased-back black hair and white long-sleeved open-neck shirts and eyeglasses on, one of them with an electric guitar slung around his neck, and everybody is disappointed. But then they start to sing, and one of them gets on the bass and another on the drums, and they go into “When the Saints Go Marching In” so loud it fills the whole tent. One of the triplets has a real low voice. He throws in “Oh Lordy” every now and then, way down low. They do “If Jesus Came to Your House.” Then they lay down their instruments and sing “Amazing Grace” without any music, just their loud strong voices harmonizing, and several people are crying by the time they bounce off the stage.
“How about that?” says Brother Reed. “Beloved, that was the Singing Triplets, don’t worry, they’ll be back. The Singing Triplets gave themselves to God when they were twelve years old, they’ve been God’s ministers of music ever since. And right now we’ve got a special treat for you, a young boy here all the way from Cheraw, South Carolina, let me present Ronnie Mills!” Ronnie Mills, not much bigger than Jubal, comes out onto the stage carrying two cinder blocks and blinking in the light. “He might not look like it, beloved, but this boy right here is one of the junior karate champions of the whole U.S. of A., and he’s got a special message for each and every one of you here tonight.”
Ronnie Mills places one of the cinder blocks upended on the stage. Then he places the other cinder block upended, too, about three feet away from the first one. Everybody leans forward to see what he’s up to. Then one of the Singing Triplets comes rushing out on the stage with a two-by-four. He hands it to Ronnie, who puts it across the tops of the cinder blocks. Then Ronnie, who has not said a word yet, unhooks the microphone from the pulpit and walks back over to where the cinder blocks and the two-by-four are, swinging the wire around him and stepping over it easily, and stands behind the blocks.
“Now I am God,” he drawls smoothly in his South Carolina accent, “and I live all alone up here in the sky. I’m up in heaven now, can’t get down to earth. Oh, I want to get down there and get into your heart but your heart is all closed up, and I’m so sad up here, I can’t get in.”
Then Ronnie lies down on the stage under the two-by-four and everybody has to lean up to see him. “Now I’m a man,” he says into the microphone, flat on his back, “a poor sinner man, my sins are so heavy they’ve got me down and I want to get up to God. But I can’t get there. There’s not any way I can get up there at all.”
Ronnie scrambles up and pauses a minute to roll up his right shirtsleeve.
“Now, what we’ve got here,” he goes on softly, “is your basic situation between man and God. We’ve got a poor sinner man flat on his back, we’ve got a God in heaven who wants to help. Well, nothing is going to happen until that poor sinner man quits pushing and fretting and just says, ‘Jesus, come into my heart.’ That’s all he’s got to do, he’s got to invite him in. And then you know what God will do?”
There’s not a sound in the tent as Ronnie puts down the microphone and raises his right arm. “HI-YA!” he screams, and chops the board in two with his bare hand. The two pieces of it go clattering over the stage and one of the cinder blocks falls down. Applause bursts out as Ronnie bows and runs off the stage and Brother Reed comes back out, shouting, “Praise the Lord!”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Ronnie, for that fine illustration of what the power of God can do in each and every one of our lives!” says Brother Reed. “That was Ronnie Mills, beloved, he’ll be with us for one more night before he has to get back to resume his summer youth ministry in Cheraw, South Carolina. And now here’s the man you’ve all been waiting to meet, the man who has brought thousands of souls to Christ, Brother Fred Lee Sampson!”
Fred Lee Sampson walks out, a small man with a crew cut, in a neat gray suit and a tie. Fred Lee Sampson looks a lot like George Gobel. He goes to the pulpit and gets behind it, looks around, and begins. Fred Lee Sampson has a quiet, quiet voice, so soft you have to strain to hear the words. Fred Lee Sampson speaks in a near monotone with no accent at all. His voice is like a newsman’s on TV, like Huntley or Brinkley or somebody like that. He does not use the old revival style. His style is an oddity, an anomaly here in this tent. Fred Lee Sampson starts off slow, telling a story about a man he knew with seven children, a man who refused to take out an insurance policy. His wife begged him to do it. The insurance man came to see him and begged him to do it. But the man didn’t want to pay that premium, small as it was. He didn’t want to commit himself. I’m a healthy man, he said. Forty-six years old and never been sick a day in my life. What do I want with some insurance policy? I’ll get an insurance policy when I’m an old man. The insurance man came to see him again and offered him a special cut-rate deal, but again the man refused to take it. That night, going home from work, this apparently healthy man suffered a fatal coronary and was dead on arrival at the hospital. The old ticker was weak, Fred Lee Sampson said, and the man never knew it at all. Fred Lee Sampson de-livers this story to the crowd in the same way that Walter Cronkite might report what the Senate did that morning. Just the facts.
He pauses a minute to let the facts sink in. “Now, I tell you,” he says in a minute, “that man was a fool. A fool, I tell you. He knew the facts. He heard the offer. But he refused to pay the price, the price which was so small compared to the results. He even refused to take the bargain rate. He was a fool, my friends.
“And looking out here tonight, over this sea of faces, I wonder how many of you have come here tonight in this man’s shoes. How many of you know the facts but don’t do anything about it? How many of you think you’ve got time to do it later, always later?”
Fred Lee Sampson takes off his gray jacket and folds it across the back of a chair. He loosens his blue tie. His voice, too, is changing now, taking on the twang of wherever he came from, going into the old rhythmic cadence.
A rustle runs through the tent and Crystal looks around. It seems to her that all the people in the audience are sitting up suddenly, leaning slightly forward in their seats. Something is going to happen here, and they’re ready for it. They want it. It’s hot and dry in this tent and Crystal licks her lips. Her stomach feels funny. She leans slightly forward with the rest as Fred Sampson goes on.
“So you want to know, you’re asking me tonight, I can feel it, you’re sending me a message loud and clear. ‘Fred Lee,’ you’re saying, ‘I’m no fool. I don’t want to go to hell, but how can I be saved? You talk about salvation, but how do I get it? How can I be saved?’
“Well, the answer to that is easy, my friends. It’s so simple you won’t believe it. But let’s look first at how you can fail, for that’s eas
y, too. It’s oh so easy to fail. You cannot enter the kingdom of heaven by good works. I don’t care what kind of a good person you are, I don’t care how many good works you’ve done. Don’t make the mistake of mixing blood and works.
“There’s one way into heaven and only one way, my friends, and it’s easy. The Lord loves us so much that he has made it easy for us. He has given us a bargain rate, and that bargain rate is Jesus Christ His son. Jesus Himself said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the light—no man cometh to the Father but by Me.’ Now, Jesus is not saying that He’s part of the way, that you have to pile up good works on the side. Oh no! He’s telling it like it is, friends. Jesus is the only way to salvation, the perfect gift for us all. The shed blood of Jesus is the only thing that will remove the curse of sin—the only thing! There is no other way!”
Fred Lee’s voice has been loud and rhythmic, but now he drops it again, a monotone whisper into the microphone. “God’s message to us is clear, my friends. We cannot afford to tarry. There are no rest stops along the road to salvation. God’s message is urgent. For I tell you, and I tell you right now, tomorrow might be too late! It is not given to us to know the day or the hour of death. It is given to us to decide of our own free will whether we accept the beautiful gift of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ, or not. We have to decide right now, friends, where we want to spend eternity. This is the word, this is the message I bring to you tonight.”
Fred Lee’s words crackle through the speaker directly above Crystal’s head. She feels as if electricity is shooting straight into her head and all down her body, crackling in every nerve. From her biology book she remembers the outline of the human body, sexless, a black outline on the white page, with the thin red lines of the nerves. A current arcs through her body, making her feel like she felt when she was with Mack—alive, fully alive and fully real, more than real.
“Now,” whispers Fred Lee Sampson, “now. I ask you to bow your heads and let the sweet message of Jesus enter your hearts tonight.” The organ begins to play softly while Fred Lee Sampson goes on. “With every head bowed and every eye closed, let us join together, my friends, in singing ‘Just as I Am,’ you know that one, it is the sweet voice of Jesus from the cross speaking to you now, my friends, calling down through the centuries for you.”
The crowd sings, “Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
The organ continues softly and Fred Lee Sampson continues softly, too, after each verse, over the strains of the organ. “He’s here. Jesus is here with us in this tent tonight, waiting for you to open up your heart to Him. Maybe you’ve never known Jesus before. Maybe you were saved once but now you’re a sinner fallen by the way. It don’t matter. Jesus wants you. Behind this tent is a small tent, my friends, where Jesus is waiting. You can be baptized right here, right now. You don’t have to be a sinner anymore. Oh, lay that burden down, friends, give up those sins to Jesus Christ who died that you—you!—might have eternal and everlasting life. Give those sins to Jesus. Give them to Him now.”
They sing another verse, and all over the tent now the people get up and come forward. There’s a lot of incoherent calling out and crying as Fred Lee Sampson praises the Lord for each soul. Crystal sits still and electrified, the sense of sin in every pore. She tastes death in her mouth all sugary and metallic, like sucking a scab. But she doesn’t want to die.
“One more chorus, friends,” whispers Fred Lee Sampson. “One last chance for you to find perfect happiness with Jesus. Oh, He wants you tonight. He’s calling you tonight. Won’t you listen? Won’t you let Him into your heart? Won’t you come?”
Crystal rises. As she stands, she notices with some minuscule part of her mind that the two seats on her right are vacant; the couple has taken advantage of the closed eyes to duck out. On her right, the woman is nursing the baby and Crystal sees a swell of fat veined breast and the baby’s mouth on it and its moving cheeks. Crystal’s stomach feels awful. She’s sure she’ll throw up, but then she doesn’t and she’s moving steadily, blindly down the dirt aisle, tripping over wires, straight to Fred Lee Sampson where he stands holding out his arms. “O Lamb of God, I come, I come,” they sing. Crystal reaches Fred Lee Sampson and falls on her knees at his feet. Every part of her mind and body is on fire, flaming, a keen high white flame like a giant Bunsen burner in the chemistry lab, all through her. Crystal is nothing but flame.
Fred Lee Sampson praises God and closes the revival. Thirty-four souls have come into Christ. They line the stage, sobbing. They cling to all their relatives and friends. Jubal Thacker holds Crystal around the waist and his heart is full of thanksgiving; it was surely the voice of God which sent him that night to her house.
Four at a time now they go to the smaller tent behind the big tent, where a large plastic swimming pool stands filled and ready. When it’s Crystal’s turn, some women and Jubal take her in and she’s dazzled by the bright light and the figure of Fred Lee Sampson standing waist deep in the water still wearing his gray trousers and his white shirt and tie. Fred Lee Sampson’s legs look little and wavy down in the water. Crystal plunges in and it’s not even cold. He takes her head and says the words and pushes her down and Crystal comes up sputtering, saved. On the way back to her car, she is surprised to see two of the Singing Triplets sitting in the back of a pickup smoking cigarettes. It doesn’t seem right. Yet nothing can spoil the moment of being saved, of being gone and lost in all those flames, of giving herself to Jesus Christ and being nothing at all.
By the time Crystal gets home, dripping wet and holy, Lorene is waiting grimly by the door. Crystal hands her the car keys and goes upstairs to pray without a word, leaving wet marks all over the floor.
YET LORENE ADJUSTS pretty fast. The next day, several people telephone her to say how pleased they are that Crystal has been saved, how sweet Crystal looked walking up. Lorene certainly can’t say that she’s not pleased, for hasn’t she been worrying all along about Crystal’s eternal soul? At first she’s afraid that Garnett’s feelings might be hurt, since Crystal has gotten herself baptized in a tent and not sprinkled in Garnett’s own Methodist Church. But Garnett proves magnanimous. He comes over to the house and questions Crystal the next day, and he is convinced that this is the real thing. In fact, he is somewhat jealous, secretly, that Crystal’s conversion was so intense. Garnett himself has always yearned for the burning bush, the voice from out of the clouds. Yet these things have not been vouchsafed to him. So be it, he concludes, and when he comes back into the kitchen from the hall where he has been talking to Crystal, he nods significantly to his sister.
“It’s all right, honey,” he tells Lorene. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you.”
Lorene grinds her cigarette out slow. “That’s all right for you to say,” she allows. “But here I am, I’ve got the total care of that child all by myself, and you know how high-strung she is, Garnett. You remember how she carried on when Grant died. And now she’s acting so strange again today, like she’s in another world or something. I don’t know what to make of her.”
Garnett smiles. “She is in another world,” he says, speaking forcefully as always out of his greater experience with the workings of God. “But she’ll calm down.”
If I could just get her to eat some Jell-O, Lorene thinks. She wanders aimlessly over to look out the window. “I don’t know,” she says. “I really don’t think much of all that Pentecostal carrying on. She gets too worked up.” Lorene pauses and then adds, “Now she wants me to go to the revival with her tonight.” She looks hard at Garnett to see how he will take this.
Garnett smiles. “Well, go on, then,” he says. “It won’t hurt you.”
“Well,” Lorene says, and sighs.
“There are many roads to Christ,” Garnett says, and leaves her with this thought.
And that night at the revival, even Lorene is impressed by the high-school karate champion. Word about him has gotten around,
and the crowd is enormous. Lorene is also impressed by the general appearance of Fred Lee Sampson, who is not at all like she expected. She does not think much of the Singing Triplets, nor does she approve of that part in the service when all those who have been saved by Fred Lee Sampson so far go up and screw in their own personal colored light bulb in the giant plyboard cross while the Triplets sing “Let Your Little Light Shine.” Crystal has a yellow bulb. She screws it in like somebody in a trance, and her mouth forms a silent O when it lights up. When the meeting is over, eighteen more people have been saved, and they are given light bulbs, too. By the end of the revival, Fred Lee Sampson hopes to have every bulb on that cross lit up.
Crystal is quiet on the way home, turning only once to Lorene to remark that she hopes Lorene will consider rededicating her life to the Lord. Lorene opens her mouth indignantly to say she thinks that won’t be necessary, then closes it without saying anything when she sees the look on Crystal’s face.
Besides, there are some advantages for Lorene in Crystal’s salvation. Crystal is a different person during the two weeks of the revival. She sings hymns around the house. She’s always asking if there’s anything she can do to help her mother. She pulls weeds and washes dishes. She spends a lot of time with Jubal, studying the Bible, and in those old stories she finds blood, death, destruction, redemption and grace, battles, and, most of all, miracles, until she thinks she can’t stand it anymore. It worries Jubal considerably that Crystal prefers the Old Testament to the New. The New Testament is more important, he tells her. Christ is what’s happening. Crystal and Jubal pore over their Bibles with serious, exalted faces, even though Lorene tactfully mentions that Crystal really ought to start laying out in the sun to get some tan; the Miss Buchanan County Contest is only two weeks away. Crystal attends the revival every night. She loses five pounds during the two weeks while the revival lasts, and at the end of it every bulb on that cross is lit up.