Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption

by Kris Saknussemm

  With Rose’s mentalist skills and phenomenal musical ability—Poppy’s hucksterism and likeability—Casper would query down the years why they never went out to California or back to New York. They just didn’t seem the kind of people to do that. The Rockies were as far west as they could go, Virginia as far north on the east coast. They were children of the heartland and the South. Poppy could rhapsodize about the bright lights and bustle of Radio City Music Hall, but the idea of actually going to Manhattan and bathing in those lights and the swoon of traffic was unthinkable.

  The man was a dyed in the wool yarn spinner and prevaricator, but with only one grave exception that Casper ever knew, he had a ruthless acuity when it came to cutting to the chase of someone else’s patter. When it came to the Bible, “This is a father-son story,” he said sharply. He took the view that the key to the Christian message is the anguish in the garden of Gethsemane—Peter’s denial, the betrayal of Judas, the Trial, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection—period. “This is good drama and something everyone can understand,” he said. “Who hasn’t been done over and who doesn’t want to be reprieved—to not die?” To him, all the “flipjack” of miracles, archangels, cherubim and the many mansions in the sky was smoke and lights. “Of course someone who can walk on water’s goin’ to get burned,” he’d say. “Show business is tough. I’ve known folks who could turn sticks into snakes and water into wine and they got crucified too, believethat. The strange deal here is that the guy doesn’t use his magic to get away—he lets himself be sacrificed. You can’t get past that. The father sets up the son, and the son wears it. It’s a blood debt for human rebellion, starting with Adam and Eve, and the son ends up being more the father than the father. That’s the hope for mankind—that the vicious jealous Father God will treat us more kindly because his Son has been down amongst us and knows the game from the inside. And the Son has leverage with the Old Man because it was him bleeding on that Cross.” (Poppy would’ve never accepted that this was a theological position, to him it was just getting the story straight.)

  He personally enjoyed all the apocalyptic thunder and blood, and saw great theatrical power in it if you had a big budget—but when it came to the question of actual religious belief—almost everything else in the Bible—Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist even the Virgin Birth, was a lot of fluff that got in the way of the big tent. “Too many talkers before the main show.”

  He particularly disliked Paul and found most of the New Testament outside the Gospels, even some of the fine passages from say 1 Corinthians, which he himself read beautifully, to be extraneous. “This whole deal comes down to just one emblem,” he’d state. “A bleeding man nailed to a cross. Folks can’t picture God the Father—or if they do, they end up seeing Moses sitting on a fancy throne. But they can see that Man on the Cross all right—and they can damn well imagine what it would be like to hang on one themselves. That’s the show in a nutshell. Never forget the show. It’s about bringing Galilee to Gatlinburg and Calvary to Corpus Christi.”

  One of the things they’d do is pour over maps of the South and circle the towns with Biblical names and make sure they understood the significance of the names and would have something specific to say to the people there. “Always know where you’re going and remind people where they are. People who aren’t travelers are always forgetting where they live,” Poppy said. Casper would find that true all his life.

  In a naïve and uneducated way, Poppy instinctively connected with what the average person can actually relate to in the Christian message—fear and hope. He certainly hit the nail on the head in what evangelicals want to believe. There’s no need for theology or interpretation. Why not then focus on the core story?

  If Poppy had his way, he’d have boiled the Bible down to Genesis, the Gospels and Revelation—but he’d have emphasized the Gospels, and his assertion that “the star attraction doesn’t get enough time on stage” was one that Casper would often think about in later years. He’d come to wonder if the old carny didn’t have more religious yearning inside him than his short order-dog track lingo let on.

  For Rose, the matter was even simpler. Music. She’d have never admitted her passion for it but it was transparent the moment she played. She had a fluidity and sensitivity unusual to find in anyone not famous—moving effortlessly between organ and piano—two very different instruments in their touch. And then she’d sing. Her voice was a thing to behear—one of those celestial sopranos that cracks you open and reforms you stronger in a single bar. For her age, it was a remarkable instrument. Why she hadn’t pursued this avenue more fully before remained as much a mystery as the woman herself.

  A lover of fancy baroque speech, Poppy saw that what would work for them was the exact opposite approach. Theirs would be a carefully rehearsed innocence. “Just a struggling family redeemed in Christ.” He grasped how effective a few archaic words such as covenant, blasphemy and dominion could be if mingled into extremely plain talk. Planned mistakes could also be used to their advantage, to build identification—because he knew from long experience that most people are afraid of speaking in public. That’s why they come to hear others. All performances are a kind of faith healing ritual, he maintained. Just never forget the three to one.”

  The three to one rule was a theory of his that Casper came to see made great sense. When you’re speaking to people, tell them three things they already know or you’re fairly sure they’ll agree with up front—then tell them something that may seem new and bold. When quoting Scripture, quote three well-known passages—and then slip in an obscure one they might not know. When asking rhetorical questions, pose three easy ones first—and then throw in something curly.

  Well before they launched into faith healing and became serious in their evangelism for money, Poppy developed a format they’d never diverge from: Welcome, Wonder, Fear, Shame, Hope, Light and Glory. It was a disciplined pattern of presentation that proved highly effective across a wide range of audiences.

  Poppy excelled at the curtain raising Welcome. Even when they were just principally singing and playing, they always began by confessing their failings. Poppy would pull out a deck of cards and do a nice trick, and then lament that the reason he knew how to do such a thing was his lust for gambling—which the grace of Jesus had helped him cure. Sister Rose (who Casper never once saw touch a drop of alcohol) would trot out an empty bottle—“My last,” she’d say with world-weary conviction, “Praise Jesus for showing me the light.”

  As Poppy reasoned, people like to hear about other’s misfortunes and trespasses—and because gambling and alcohol problems are so widespread, they always struck a lot of individual chords while drawing the audience as a whole into identifying with them. “We’re just simple country folk like you. We’re just a struggling family who has been redeemed in Christ—rinsed in the blood of his anguish—saved by the mercy of his love. We want to share that great Good News.”

  As Poppy pointed out, there was no way for anyone to argue with this. He and Rose always dressed very simply. They looked and sounded like simple people—and how could anyone question the confession of their faults? When it came to little Mathias, they pushed the edge harder.

  At first the boy was dressed in a white linen suit like a miniature Colonel Sanders, and with his white hair grown long, he had a noticeably alien presence. He was introduced as the “miracle child” they didn’t think they could have so late in life. That explained him being an albino in many people’s minds. But Poppy went one step further still and cast him as a “damaged miracle”—because he’d been born a cripple. Out came an ingeniously doctored photograph of a boy who looked like he could’ve been Mathias True, wearing heavy caliper supports on both legs, standing with the aid of crude, insectile looking wooden crutches. The specter of polio was still very real in the South in those days, and that one photograph had a lot of resonance.

  “God took those braces off my legs,” little Mathias would chime in. “Only God could do it—becau
se I believed. I don’t believe because God allowed me to walk—I prayed and He answered me. I used to walk like this”—and he would do the well practiced stuttering cartoon shuttle step he’d been taught. “Now—I can do this—” and he’d then do a quick soft shoe and sing a bar of “God’s Been Good to Me”—while Sister Rose would immediately take up the more serious “Oh Glorious Redeemer.”

  Instead of coming in with guns blazing, as most preachers of the day felt the need to do, they arrived in humility with the kinds of problems and shortcomings audiences in Licklog, Tennessee could understand all too well.

  Poppy’s plan stressed this delicately crafted almost direct counter to any hint of show business finesse (which of course only a showman could conceive)—and once that groundwork was laid—then they’d run the Cut Back. That was the three to one moment when they really did surprise people. After lulling them into sympathy—making them think “these poor bumblers”—bam, they hit them right between the eyes with some show biz something they weren’t expecting. “What we need is theater folks can’t help but believe in—so that means they can’t see it as theater until it’s too late.”

  Music was their great strength. They had the pathetic looking organ (which had the logistical advantage of being able to be wheeled around)—contrasted with Rose’s exceptional talent. There was Poppy’s folksy banjo (and he was good enough to occasionally sound like a beginner) balanced by his striking tenor. Then there was little Mathias’ voice, which under Rose’s tutelage became something like unto a weapon. (For slower, connective mood building music, Rose would improvise, often vocalizing along to the music as if under some spell. Her hummed version of “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” would haunt Casper’s dreams.) Finally, they had the special asset of the Only Men songbook to call upon.

  Music was the glue that held them together. It gave them an advantage in getting dates and allowed them to appear alongside other evangelists initially without seeming to compete with them. But the most vital benefit of all was that it provided a means of integrating Mathias True gradually, of letting him get his “stage legs under him.”

  Poppy knew just how charged and weird things could get in some of the environments they wanted to work. The white fever of hysteria—fainting and rolling—the moment when snakes would come out of the baskets in some of the backwoods places. The speaking in tongues.

  They wanted young Mathias well grounded in the act and comfortable before the groping hands and wide-eyed sod kickers. “No one learns carnival in a day,” Poppy said. “But you’ve got carnival in you,” he told the boy.

  They started off playing at planned revivals, providing wholesome Christian entertainment based on their music. Then Poppy got a hold of a mailing list of churches and started pitching. They worked their way onto the bill at minister’s conventions in Memphis and Atlanta. They’d come to have their own PA system and tent one day (hiring locals to help erect it, just like in the circus), but their beginnings were as basic as the image they sought to present.

  The term they used for the network of small towns they targeted wasn’t the Amen Trail, but rather the Kerosene Circuit, from the days before electricity was uniform—and it carried with it a concealed empathy for those sentenced to the “widow’s weeds and wishbones.” Their feet were made of clay too—and there was a genuine ministry to their conniving, which Casper came to see is why it worked.

  Poppy had posters printed up, which would be placed in beauty parlors, barbershop windows and grocery stores.

  GOOD CHRISTIAN FAMILY MUSIC

  They’d pass out flyers to kids walking to school in the mornings—and to teachers. And if that wasn’t enough, Poppy made a sandwich sign for little Mathias True to wear and wander the main street that said

  HELP ME AND MY FAMILY HELP SAVE YOU.

  “That kid’s a goldmine,” Casper once overheard Poppy say to Rose. “One look at him and you’re won over. Pure carnival.”

  Little Mathias gave himself over to his new life—anything was better than the Lonely Room. If his schooling was irregular, he didn’t mind, because in schools he was abused for his appearance, while on the road he was seen as exceptional and interesting.

  He soon got over all stage fright and became more integrated into their act. (Of course, he didn’t have much choice.) He quickly had at least fifty Biblical passages memorized, and his love of news made it easy for him to absorb intelligence sourced from the local papers that Poppy made a point of getting hold of before each meeting (remembering his father’s 24 Hour Man ritual).

  The turning point came one night in northern Louisiana. Rose had just finished playing “Jesus Loves Me Because He Told Me So,” when Mathias True got what Poppy called “the Big Idea.” Casper would never be sure what inspired it—it seemed so simple later—but it would put them on the map.

  When the last organ notes died out, he spontaneously sang the chorus a cappella and then leapt forward into the audience, straw underneath his feet. “Look at me!” he cried. “Jesus loves even me!” Then he shouted at the top of his lungs, “JESUS LOVES EVEN ME—A FREAK WHO COULDN’T WALK!”

  Poppy and Rose were taken aback, but they knew good theater when it was in their face.

  “I used to walk like this,” Mathias True whispered, shuffling as he usually did—and then he fell hard into a buxom woman’s arms. She had no choice but to stop his fall. Before she could recover, he bounced back and yelled, “But I fell—and was caught. I was raised up—and put back on my feet! Through the strength of my faith. You don’t believe in your own healing? Well, believe in mine!” He collapsed into a man’s arms, going completely limp. “God only gave me the power to walk again through faith. But I can’t do it alone. I need your help. I don’t ask you to believe in me . . . I beg you to believe for me. God’s healing grace is within me, but only you can make it live. Pass me around . . . like bread to share.”

  Poppy and Rose were quietly thunderstruck by this impromptu, but they were fast on the mark on stage. “Bread to Share” is an Only Men hymn that’s really a twelve-bar blues number that makes for an infectious hand clapping counterpoint to a surging organ. Poppy’s rhythm was faultless. Rose let both hands loose—while Mathias True let himself be passed among the crowd.

  When at last restored to the microphone, he knocked it over and called out, “We will all fall down together now—and be braced by our faith. Fall down to be raised up in His Name—so that you may know life everlasting in the light of His Holy Love!”

  As cool a customer as Rose was, and as businesslike as Poppy could be, they knew the good thing when they heard it. This was the way forward—the next step up the ladder. Rose made a new special suit for the boy patterned after the American flag and he was rechristened as Reverend America, child-preaching sensation of the White Angel Fire & Faith Revival Mission. She star spangled a white top hat they found for him—a hat that he’d theatrically flourish and then set down on a stool, saying, “God loves America. Now America needs to show its love of God.”

  Rose would play one stilted bar of “God Bless America” and then cut for the corn with ten fingers on fire doing one of the very few Only Men songs written by a woman—Sincere Egypt Harding, born with rickets into slavery on a plantation called Cade’s Island. Where were you when Jesus gave me—my life blood relief—now I’ll never know no sorrow nor no grief.

  Poppy and Rose groomed the young star in his new role, rehearsing him for hours at the house in Joplin or in the back of their bus amidst the tooth ache trees and sparkleberry. He listened to tapes of Billy Sunday, Smith Wigglesworth, Billy Graham—and Herbert W. Armstrong’s The World of Tomorrow radio program. They took him to hear famous black preachers of the day like Marcus Garvey Clarke and Obadiah Wilson. His singing influences ranged from Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” to Sister Rosetta Tharpe—and they made him smoke Pall Malls to deepen his voice (which would provoke in him a lifelong hatred of the tobacco habit).

  The Bread to Share gimmick worke
d every time and inspired Poppy’s ambitions. “I think we’re ready to try some healing, now—that’s where the real money is in this game.” Reverend America had “come into the carnival” faster and more fully than they’d hoped.

  One night in Lubbock, he held a falsetto note . . . for what seemed like an eternity, Rose taking the organ down an octave to emphasize the height of the vocal. Then he bowed and said, “Let us all pray—let us pray—all the way down.” He got the entire gathering to kneel down with him. One solid minute of total silence. Not a single cough. “Not many can do that,” Poppy said. “I’ve seen many try.”

  6

  Normal

  Suddenly it seemed so simple just to get on a bus to St. Louis. You can bury my body down by the highway side, so my evil old spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride.

  His seatmate was a hipless peroxide blonde gone to dishwater and rat’s nest, of indeterminate age. Her name was Sharee and she had all about her the unmistakable aura of domestic violence and the correctional system. She said she came from Waterloo, Iowa and had done time for “hanging paper,” a quaint bit of slang for writing bad checks. Casper wanted more of those colorful sayings instead of watching her scratch her tattoos, all of which had a heavy metal darkness (with a sprinkling of redneck waitress).

  She liked to talk, although she had a vocal tic suggestive of a switchblade striking taut newspaper, and she was eager to acquaint him with her “real problem.” She had it nailed down to her ex-husband, who’d killed himself when he discovered he had AIDS.

  “For years I’d suspected,” she told Casper. “Shania’d get in the bath with him when he’d come home all muddy from the road crews—like dads and little girls do—normal families—but ‘cause I don’t know normal there’s difficulties.”