by phuc
Willard's blinded eyes had sealed over, and there were holes where his nostrils and mouth had been. Even Willard's sex had dried up and fallen off, like the shriveled stem of an overripe apple.
The tattoos, as usual, were quite busy. The animal designs made the appropriate, though diminutive, noises, fussed and snapped at one another like ill-tempered neighbors. The rude arm remarks (KICK ASS and EAT PUSSY), the bandoliers and the like moved about as if looking for better terrain. The tiger on Willard's stomach was silent, however, and, except for the lazy blink-ings of its eyes, remained stationary.
An involuntary cry went up from the crowd, and it was a ragged bunch. They reminded me of those photos I had seen of starved, mistreated Jews in books about the war. Some of the women had little round stomachs, and it struck me that they might be pregnant. My God, had we been in the drive-in that long?
The King held up both hands like a victorious prizefighter. His mouths smiled. And out of the top mouth came: "I have returned. I offer you manna from the bowels of the messiah."
With that he opened his mouths phenomenally wide, the teeth folding back against the roofs of his mouths like tire-buster spears, and with a rumble and a methane-ish stink we could smell from where we stood, out came popcorn.
Sort of.
The velocity of the vomit was tremendous, the well from which it gorged endless. The content of the vomit looked to be cola and popcorn. It hit the crowd like a fire-hose blast, dispersed them, knocked them down. It spewed all the way back to Lot B.
Then it ceased. The shaken crowd found their feet.
Again the King opened his mouth, and once more the vomit spewed. More powerful than before. And when it ended this time, the King said, "Take of me and eat."
The crowd, somewhat recovered, examined the corn, looked at it long and hard. And then one man picked up a big puffy kernel and closed his eyes and put it in his mouth and bit down. You could hear his sigh of contentment throughout The Orbit.
Everyone, as of old, began to shove and fight for the corn, and a stray kernel, perhaps launched by an excited foot, came rolling our way, went under the Fairlane and lay between mine and Bob's legs.
We looked at it.
We looked at one another.
We looked at it again.
It looked back.
It was the general shape of popcorn, slightly off-white in color with a sort of scabby look between the creases, along with thread-thin veins that pulsed . . . and in its center was an eye. A little eye that had no lid, but was instead a constant thing that matched the eye in the center of the King's top forehead.
Bob put his foot on it and pressed down. It was like stepping on one of those big dog ticks that are flat and gray until they've fed and dropped off their hosts to lie big as plump raisins.
"It moved under my boot," Bob claimed. "I felt it."
"Jesus," I said, and it sounded like a plea.
We looked back at the people. They were popping the corn into their mouths, oblivious of its appearance, or not caring. Blood oozed from between their lips. I could see their bodies rippling as if a sonic wave were passing beneath their flesh. Their grunts and cries of satisfaction and anxiety came to me like hyena barks, their squeals and lip-smacking like the sound of hogs at trough.
And a part of me, the hungry part, envied them.
The King looked at us over the top of the Fairlane. It was a decent distance away, if not outstanding, and I couldn't determine with his features the way they were, if he recognized us. I doubted it. Least not in a way that really mattered.
"Come," came that sweet-sour voice, "join us, brothers. Eat."
"Not just now," Bob said. "Maybe later."
And we turned and walked quickly away, back to the camper. When we got there, Bob took some wire cutters out of his toolbox, went out and cut the speaker wire off at the post, flung the speaker far away from us.
4
That's when I made my decision to join the "church."
If I was destined to go down before evil, or simply to starve to death, I wanted to make sure I would be embraced by the arms of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.
It was odd that I hadn't seen this obvious truth before. Odd that it had always been right before me, and I had denied it. But now it was all very clear, as if a visionary light had opened from the blackness above, a light unlike the fuzzy blue lightning, but instead a warm yellow light that struck me in the top of the head, penetrated my skull and filled me with sudden understanding.
Shortly thereafter, for it took little to tire us, we climbed into the back of the camper to sleep, and when I heard Bob's breathing go regular, I got up and snuck out and went over to that bus.
As I was nearing it, the back door opened, and the contents of an improvised bedpan went flying. I was glad I wasn't along a little farther when this happened, or my first meeting with them might have been less than auspicious.
Watching where I stepped (for this bedpan procedure had been followed for quite some time), I went over and called just as the door was closing.
With the door half open, the woman of the bus stuck her head out and looked at me in the same way all the Christians looked at me. With that cold stare that told me I was an outsider. She had her hair up, and some of it had escaped over her face like spider legs.
She was wearing an ugly duster and pink house slippers I hadn't seen before. They had MEXICO written- across the top of the insteps.
"I want to be one with the Lord," I said.
She just kept staring.
"I am not a Christian, and I see that you folks are, and I like what I see. I want to be one of you. I want to join in salvation, and—"
"Hold it a minute," she said, turned back into the bus and yelled, "Sam!"
After a moment the door cracked wider and the scrawny man stood there. Behind him it was dark, but there was enough light from the storm overhead that I could see the bus's walls were lined with shelves and the shelves were full, though I couldn't tell with what.
I noticed the man's tie wasn't a real tie at all. It was painted on. He eyeballed me for a long moment. "Whatchawant, sinner?"
"I want to be a Christian."
"Say you do. Want to be baptized and the like?"
"If that's what it takes."
"Does."
"Then baptize me."
"That's the spirit. Come around front of the bus, I'll let you in."
"Sam?" the woman said.
"Now, don't you worry," he said. "This here's a nice boy. Besides, he wants to become a Christian. Right, son?"
"That's right," I said.
"See, there you are," he said to the woman. Then to me: "Come around front."
They closed the door and I went around to the door at the front side of the bus, and Sam opened it. I stepped inside and saw that a blanket curtain had been put behind the driver's seat, blocking off the rest of the bus from view. The woman was still back there.
There was a special seat bolted to the floor next to the one behind the steering wheel, and hanging from the mirror was a plastic Jesus that glowed in the dark, one of those things you buy across the border in Juarez. I had never wanted one. Lastly, in upraised rainbow stencil on the dash was this message: GOD IS LOVE.
"Sit down, boy." He patted the seat beside him, and I took it. "Now," he said, pursing his lips, "you want to become a Christian, do you?"
"I've been watching you folks . . . your meetings going on ... Well, I like what I see."
"Don't blame you ... I was a plumber, you know."
"Beg your pardon?"
"And a painter. Did plumbing and painting. Paint a little, plumb a little. Mostly plumbing,
'cause I'm kind of wiry, you see. Get up under them houses like a snake, fix them pipes.
Some of the other plumbers called me that —Snake, I mean. They'd say, 'Snake, you sure can get under them houses,' and I'd say, 'Yeah, I can.' 'Cause I could."
"I see," I said.
"Painting now . . .
that was different. I did it, but I didn't care for it. All them fumes make you sick, real sick. I'd sign on to paint a house, and I'd be sick through the whole thing.
Not a minute's peace, just queasy and kind of headachy all the time. Even at night when I was away from it, after I'd cleaned up, I could smell that paint under my fingernails. It kind of hung on me like a cloud, it did. Much preferred plumbing. Sewer smell ain't nothing to a paint smell. Sewer smell is good honest smell. Human smell. But paint . . .
paint is just paint, you see what I mean?"
I had begun to sense a parable. "Well ... I suppose so."
The blanket moved then and the woman came out from behind it. She had put on another duster, not any more attractive than the first. She had on the same house shoes. I noted that she kept the backs broken down so her heels could hang out.
"It was just awful when he was painting," the woman said, picking right into the conversation. "He wasn't no fun at all. Grouchy all the time, like a poisoned dog. Hi. My name is Mable."
"Glad to meet you," I said. "I guess this is your seat."
"Oh no," Mable said. "You just keep it. I'll stand right here. I'm fine. I used to say to Sam about the way he acted when he was painting, 'Now you gonna act like that, you go out and sleep in the yard.' Didn't I say that to you, honeybunch?"
"Yes, you did, dumpling. She'd just say it right out, and mean it too. 'You gonna act like that, Sam,' she'd say, 'then you go out there in the yard and sleep. Take your piller with you, but get on out of this house.' That would straighten me right up, it would. Couldn't stand to be without my dumpling."
I was beginning to suspect this wasn't a parable.
The woman moved close to him, and he reached up and put an arm around her waist. She patted him on the head. I thought maybe she would give him a dog treat next.
"Painting is why I got preaching on my mind," Sam said. "They used to say, 'Be a Baptist preacher and you don't have to do no work,' and that sounded good to me. So, I started trying to teach myself about it, just so I could quit painting, you see, and you know what, son?"
I said I didn't.
"The call come over me. I'd been reading the Bible, trying to get a handle on it, trying to get all them names separate in my head, you know, and one night I'd just finished all that—I'd been painting earlier in the day—and I was dozing, listening to the radio, one of them country and western stations, and God, the Big Man himself come to me over that radio and told me some things he hadn't told none of them other preachers. Gave me some insights into His ways."
"Hallelujah, honey," the woman said.
"His name be praised. So God come to me over that radio, and I remember it was right in the middle of a pretty good ole song too, and he said, 'Sam, I'm giving you the call, and I want you to spread my word.' That was it. He didn't lay out no details or nothing, just matter-of-fact about it, and I packed up our things, built us a traveling home out of this bus—"
"They come and took our house 'cause we couldn't pay for it," Mable added.
"Yes, they did, didn't they, dumpling. And I got this bus fixed up, and we started traveling around the country, doing a little fixing here and there, plumbing mostly, little painting when I couldn't get out of it and we needed the money, and I did a lot of preaching."
"It paid better than the plumbing or painting," the woman said. "It was just a sight to see how full that offering plate would be after a night of Sam's preaching. People just loved him."
"But the money wasn't the important thing. The thing was, I was reaching people with the Lord, taking the offering to keep this bus running, to feed our faces and keep us at the Lord's work."
"Sam made so many conversions," Mable said.
"Yes, I did. And one night while we was traveling, we come by this place, seen all those cars in line, and I thought, now wouldn't this be a golden oppurtunity?"
"Them's the exact words you used, sugar," Mable said. "You turned to me and said,
'Wouldn't this be a golden oppurtunity?' "
"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.