The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  "They're in the parish hall," said Pedro, shivering and hiking up his underpants.

  * * *

  It wasn't long before the crowd began to move into the tent and find their seats. Unlike St. Barnabas, or any church that I knew of, the seats in the front filled up first, no doubt to get a good view of the featured speaker of the evening, Rahab Archibald Fabergé-Dupont — billed as Rev. Rahab McTavish to save confusion and because Brother Hog didn't want to have to explain why little Rahab was born out of wedlock and therefore didn't have his own last name, a minor point, to be sure. The "Reverend" title tacked to his name was legal enough. I'd shown Hog how to get the baby ordained on the internet. I also pointed out that Rahab could be a bishop for just ten dollars more, but Hog didn't want him to get the big head. "Plenty of time for that later," he said. "Besides, I don't want him to outrank me."

  Brother Robert E. Lee cranked up the organ for the pre-game show. He wandered through the old favorites — I Come to the Garden Alone, Blessed Assurance, The Old Rugged Cross, Love Lifted Me, and a host of others. He moved from one to the next seamlessly, changing keys, changing registers, doing palm slides, glissandos, and adding the pitch bends and vibrato for which the Hammond B3 was famous. As the congregation settled into their seats, the True Branches Gospel Bluegrass Band took the stage and played a few of their signature tunes, including I Fell In A Pile of Jesus and Got Love All Over Me, and Heaven Stays Open All Night. The crowd loved it and they received a standing ovation. Meg and I had managed a couple of seats in the fourth row and stood with the rest. Next was a testimony given by Nelson Kendrick, who'd had a recent near-death experience and had been led by this episode to share with us the hierarchy of angelic beings. He was well-informed because he'd gotten his information from the archangel Raphael himself.

  "My word," exclaimed Meg. "He's got charts!"

  We were enlightened as to the many spheres and their residents, including seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, principalities, angels, archangels, and a "host" of others.

  It wasn't a bad lecture, quite frankly, but nothing I hadn't heard before, or that couldn't be gleaned from reading St. Ambrose, Hildegarde, John of Damascus, or St. Thomas Aquinas. Nelson's model was most closely related to the Dante archetype in The Divine Comedy. I wondered if Dante had the same teacher as Nelson.

  Before we knew it, we'd been sitting in our seats for an hour. Then, as Nelson finished up and started packing away his visual aids, Robert E. Lee began the warm-up. It was a sing-along, of course. Hymns and songs that everyone knew. I'll Fly Away, This Little Light of Mine, Count Your Many Blessings. The crowd sang with gusto, no big screen or song-sheets needed. The band joined in and before long the mountains were ringing with the sound of five hundred voices. He Leadeth Me, Sweet Hour of Prayer, Power In The Blood. Clapping now. A few of the more fervent were spinning in the aisles, eyes closed, their hands raised high. Then Brother Hog took the stage.

  Hog was resplendent in his white, three-piece suit. His face fairly glowed as he stood at the pulpit and surveyed his audience. He was back in his element. Brother Hog was a preacher first, last, and foremost. Of that there was no doubt.

  "Brothers and Sisters," he thundered, raising his hands into the air, as if lifting a giant, weightless, walrus aloft. "Let us praise God Almighty!"

  Robert E. pounced on the keys like a chicken on a June bug. The organ leapt to life to the sound of gospel licks God loves to hear. The crowd was on its feet again jumping and shouting and hollering up a storm. Hallelujahs rang through the tent. Meg and I got to our feet as well, more out of nervous acquiescence than a need to hop.

  "Perhaps we should have chosen seats nearer the back," I said quietly, as we finally sat back down.

  "No kidding," whispered Meg.

  Brother Hog preached in turn on salvation by grace, accepting baptism as a sacrament, the dangers of boasting, being born again, the parable of the Great Banquet, and Abraham's promise, with a healthy dose of the Book of Daniel thrown in for good measure. Punctuated with riffs from the organist, he wrapped it all up in about forty-five minutes. By the time he was finished, sweat was running in rivers down his red face. The pocket handkerchief in his left hand that he'd been using to mop his features was wringing wet. The microphone in his right was slick, and every so often he'd had to shake drops of water off it. Now he was spent, but it wasn't over.

  "I know you all have come tonight to hear the Gospel proclaimed," he said, his voice low, but amplified through the speakers so no one missed a word. "And there's someone I need you to meet."

  "Rahab!" shouted a voice from the back. "Hallelujah!"

  Brother Hog nodded. "Yep. My own little boy, Rahab McTavish. It wasn't long back that my wife and I discovered that this child has been touched by the Lord. He is a preaching baby!"

  "Yes!" shouted a woman two seats down from Meg. She bounced to her feet and waved both hands over her head in exultation.

  "The Holy Spirit is here tonight!" roared Brother Hog.

  The organ swelled, just chords now, and people shouted and danced wherever they could find a spot to move their feet. We heard glossolalia — speaking in tongues — coming from different parts of the tent. Then he was there, on the stage: Rahab, the Baby Evangelist.

  He was dressed exactly like his father in a white, three-piece suit, white shoes, and a tiny, white belt. In his left hand, Rahab held on tight to his copy of Baby's First Old Testament, KJV, with his pudgy fingers. Into his right hand, Brother Hog placed a black wireless microphone and pushed him gently to the front of the stage. The crowd became quiet. "Sit down, we can't see," came a voice from behind us. Slowly, from the front to the back, the congregation found their seats.

  Rahab stood looking at the crowd, his chubby face split by a gigantic smile. He knew what to do, exactly what he and his father had practiced over and over in their doublewide. He put the microphone to his mouth and hollered, "Eenanah malata hasha alanaya!"

  "Shwaaa!" went the organ as Robert E. Lee's fingers danced over the keys dipping into those holy chords that only the blessed know.

  "Hallelujah!" erupted the crowd, back on their feet again, clapping and dancing. "Praise the Lord!"

  "Sit down, we can't see!" yelled voices from the rear of the tent.

  The organ backed down a little, and little Rahab began his strut. Up and down the front of the stage he paraded, stopping every few steps to proclaim another truth. "Uliamba magashami andjesta!"

  "Interpreter!" came a voice from the crowd. "Brother Hog, we need an interpreter!"

  "Thus saith the Lord," shouted Hog, "you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end."

  "A prophesy!" shouted a man's voice. "A prophesy from the baby!"

  "Or maybe from St. Matthew," I muttered.

  "Canum acheniko ofonamachi!" hollered Rahab.

  "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes."

  "Hallelujah!" came the shouts.

  "Miliamba andjulu!"

  "But do not fear!" continued Hog. "There is salvation in the Savior."

  This continued for about ten more minutes, with Brother Hog interpreting the unknown baby tongues for all he was worth.

  "Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa," chanted Rahab finally, his head bobbing side to side, now entranced by the sound of his own voice over the loudspeakers. "Ba, ba, ba, ba!" Hog knew it was coming. A two-year-old has a relatively short preaching span and, although Rahab had done better than Hog had hoped his first time out, the boy had reached his limit. Hog scooped the baby up, lifted him into his arms, and clicked off the microphone.

  "Thank you, Rahab, for your gifts and the gifts of the Spirit," Hog said, his head dropping into a prayerful pose. "You have truly blessed us all tonight." He looked up. "We're going to take up an offering now," he announced, "so you can help us with this ministry, and, as we do, Sis
ter Birtwhistle is going to sing a song for us. Give! Give until you can't stand to be blessed any more!"

  "Hey," said Meg, "it's Goldi Fawn!"

  "Sure is," I said. Keenly aware that Goldi Fawn wrote her own music, I wondered how Robert E. would do. Turns out, he did fine. Goldi Fawn provided him with a lead sheet and I'm In The Velcro Arms of Jesus went off without a hitch.

  "Let us pray!" Brother Hog said, getting the high sign from the head usher who held up a fried chicken bucket, one of ten or so, brimming with bills. Hog passed Rahab off to Goldi Fawn and she took him off the stage. The music heightened to a crescendo, then relaxed and accompanied the people back into their chairs where they bowed their heads and finally became quiet, save for the occasional "Amen" and "Hallelujah" that punctuated Brother Hog's prayer of invitation.

  We stuck around as the hundred or so folks made their way to the front of the tent for prayer and blessing. Brother Hog had three other ministers on hand to help with the task of getting the sinners right with God and dealing with the various prayer requests. It was a beautiful spring night, so Meg and I took a couple of the folding chairs and set them up under Portia's oak tree, a hundred yards or so from the blazing lights of the tent, and watched shooting stars. We'd both brought light jackets and it turned out to be a good thing. The crowd slowly dispersed, each one shaking hands with Brother Hog and Robert E. in turn, then clapping each other on the back, vowing to see them again real soon. When there were only a few dozen left, Meg and I gathered up our chairs and made our way back to the tent. Hog and Robert E. were slumped in a couple of seats on the front row. Goldi Fawn was still in a receiving line, although there were now only two people left for her to greet.

  "Well, thank yeew!" we heard her say as we passed by. "Jesus just gave me that song one day while I was doing hair. I had to stop in the middle of a perm to write it down, and, let me tell you, that woman's hair was never the same." She smiled sweetly. "But it was worth it, don't cha think?"

  We put the chairs back in the tent and walked over to Hog.

  "Nice show!" I said. "You've still got it, that's for sure."

  "Thanks for coming," said Hog. His hair was plastered against his head and his face was still red from exertion. "Noylene would've had my head. Now where's Rahab?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know. Who has him?" I looked at Meg. She suddenly lost all her color.

  "Goldi Fawn has him," said Brother Hog.

  "No, she doesn't," I said. "She's over there shaking hands." I pointed to Goldi Fawn, now chatting up her last admirer.

  It was Hog's turn to lose his color.

  "Goldi Fawn!" he screamed. "Where's Rahab?"

  Goldi wasn't used to hearing a man scream and was suitably startled. Her devotee jumped as well.

  "I ... I don't know. He was here just a little bit ago ..." She screwed up her face in thought. "I was signing an autograph. No, wait ... I handed him to the guy who wanted the autograph. Just to hold for a second. I gave him Rahab's diaper bag, too."

  "What?" screeched Hog. "Who did you give him to?"

  "I can't remember!" howled Goldi Fawn, now terrified and running toward us in a panic. "Oh, my God! I can't remember!"

  "Calm down now," I said, putting my hands on her shoulders. "Think for a minute."

  She peered at the ground, took some deep breaths, then raised her head and looked me in the eye. "He was about medium," she said. "Not too tall, not too short. Medium brown hair. Longish. He needed a styling, that's for sure."

  "A man?"

  "Yes. He was wearing a sport jacket. Striped. And a tie." She nodded vigorously. "I remember now! He had a beard. A dark beard. And he was wearing a hat. One of those Panama hats, with his hair sticking out underneath. And sunglasses!" She paused. "Hey, wait a minute! It's nighttime. Why was he wearing sunglasses?"

  "Oh, no!" muttered Brother Hog. His legs collapsed and he dropped to the ground in a heap.

  * * *

  I called Nancy and Dave and they rounded up a search party that included a couple of Helen Pigeon's bloodhounds, who got the scent from Rahab's baby blanket. The remaining worshipers, ushers, and Brother Hog's staff, numbering about thirty folks, were happy to help as well. We searched the grounds of the Valle Crucis Conference Center, high and low, for four hours.

  Rahab was gone. Again.

  Chapter 26

  It was the end of the world all right, that was obvious. There were Baptists everywhere, all of them dancing. In the middle of the room, all the members of an older adult Sunday School class were doing the Lambada. A Yucatec mission group was jitterbugging in the corner. Clogging, waltzing, shimmying — they were going crazy. Why they were in Sarsaparilla I had no idea, but now that they were here, it was a hoochy-fest.

  "I'll be danged," said Pedro. "It's the 2012 Southern Baptist Convention." He pointed into the corner past a couple of elders doing the Watusi. "There's the registration table."

  "Oh, man. We should have seen this coming," I said. "SBC doesn't stand for the Society for the Betterment of Choirs. It stands for the Southern Baptist Convention."

  "Hee hee!" giggled the winkle with a twinkle. "The Mayans were the first Southern Baptists and WE set them up. Thus it is written in the Blarney Codex. I'll bet you didn't know that!"

  "What?" I said, unbelievably, but not unbelievably as in my incredulity was not believable, which it was under the circumstances, but what Fluffernutter said.

  "And now it's the end of the world," said Pedro sadly. "I told you not to get your winkle wet."

  * * *

  Friday morning I picked Nancy up at the police station at 7:00 a.m. and we drove in the direction of Varmit LeMieux's house on Old Chambers Road. His Land Rover wasn't there, so we figured that our next stop was Blueridge Furs.

  "Goldi Fawn says the man was wearing a striped sport jacket and a tie," I said, reiterating the information I'd gotten from Goldi Fawn Birtwhistle. I told all this to Nancy last night, but it had been late and I wanted to make sure we were both on the same page. "Medium height and weight. Panama hat, longish brown hair sticking out from underneath. Dark beard, sunglasses."

  "A disguise," said Nancy.

  "That's what I'm thinking," I said.

  "You think it was Varmit?" asked Nancy. "I've been thinking about it all night and still can't figure out why he'd steal Rahab again. That is, if he was the one who did it in the first place."

  "Can't rule it out. The last time Rahab was kidnapped, Noylene and Hog got a call within a couple of hours. They haven't heard a peep so far."

  "So far as you know," said Nancy.

  "I think Noylene would call."

  I turned right on Highway 53, saw the sign for Blueridge Furs, turned again and followed a long, dirt drive to the top of a hill.

  Blueridge Furs occupied the old site of the Locust Grove Dairy Farm that had bought it from Jed Pierce's grandfather who'd run a family dairy farm until the '80s. Today there wasn’t a house on the property, but there were three large dairy barns; a manure storage area; an outbuilding that I recognized as the pelting shed; two new metal warehouses, long and wide with twelve-foot ceilings and large, roll-up shipping doors on the near ends; and the front office. The barns, I knew, housed the Minques that the enterprise harvested for their pelts, which were then shipped to Bulgaria to be turned into lovely accoutrements in which any fashionable woman would be happy to be adorned. Mittens, coats, stoles, vests, hats, purses, you name it. But it wasn't the Minques we were there to see.

  "He's here," I said, nodding in the direction of Varmit's dark-green Land Rover.

  "You want to be the good cop or the bad cop?" asked Nancy.

  "Let's both be bad cops this time."

  I pulled up in front of the office and parked my truck beside Varmit's. Nancy and I both got out, walked to the front door and she tried the knob. It was unlocked, so she opened the door and we walked in. Varmit, engrossed in a phone call, looked up, saw us, then said, "I'll call you back," and hung up.

  "You guys a
re up early," he said. He was dressed in jeans and a gray sweatshirt. Work clothes. His hair was combed, but he was unshaven and looked haggard. Dark circles ringed his eyes.

  "Those your casino friends on the phone?" Nancy asked.

  Varmit's eyes widened, then his face collapsed and he put his head down on the desk. We stood there, silent, for about a minute, then he raised his head and said, "Yeah. You know about them?"

  "We know," I said. "They were happy to confirm your indebtedness."

  "They called late last night to tell me that I needed to double my payment or they'd tell the police why I'd killed somebody named Johnny Talltrees. I told them what I'm telling you. I never killed anyone named Johnny Talltrees. He's that Indian that you found behind the Beautifery, right?"

  "Right," I said.

  "I didn't kill him," said Varmit. "I never even met him."

  "Did you meet the other two guys?" Nancy said.

  "Uh-huh. I'm well acquainted with Jango Watie and George Sequoyah. They'll be coming by this morning for their money."

  "Let me ask you this," I said. "If Muffy hadn't died and you hadn't come into that life insurance, how would you have paid those guys? I mean, you'd already declared bankruptcy."

  Anger clouded his face. "You think I? ..." he sputtered. "You think that I could? ..."

  "Of course we do," said Nancy. "Why wouldn't we? You were running the sound system when it shorted out. You cashed out on the life insurance policy the day after your wife was killed."

  "Sure," I said. "You needed seventy-five thousand dollars to pay the Friendly Gaming Club and another hundred twenty-seven thousand to get you out of Chapter 11."

  "But ... but ..."

  Me: "You're the one who wanted Muffy to sing Eagle's Wings in church. You couldn't wait."

  Nancy: "We just can't figure out why you bothered to take Rahab when you'd planned to kill Muffy all along."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" yelled Varmit, jumping to his feet. "I took Rahab?" He was starting to hyperventilate.