The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish

by Allan Stratton

  The next thing Percy knew, he was on stage screaming at Timmy Beeford, lightning shearing the main pole, ripping the wires, popping the light bulbs, exploding the generator — and his mother’s childhood caution ringing in his ears: “Percy, my pumpkin, be careful what you pray for. God may be listening.”

  K.O. Doyle and Co.

  Bright and early the following morning, Brother Floyd had surveyed the damage to ministry assets. It was calamitous. The generator and trailer were write-offs, ditto the lights and supports. As for the canvas, the cost of repair would be prohibitive.

  “Hot diggity!” Floyd crowed. This would lay to rest any hopes his partner might have harboured for their ministry’s resurrection. Good thing he’d kept up the insurance payments. Brother Percy’d urged him to drop the policy and put their fate in God’s hands. “Trust in the Lord and He will provide.” However when dealing with God, Floyd had preferred to keep one hand on his wallet.

  His caution vindicated, he savoured the wreckage, then skipped to a telephone where he placed a call to their underwriter. He was promised that an adjuster would be up from Toronto on next morning’s train. If God were as helpful as the United Dominion Insurance Company, Heaven would have a lot more takers.

  Visions of Easy Street filling his head, Floyd made his way to London General Hospital to visit his partner. In the past evening’s upheaval, the poor man had broken his jaw. With the wires and swelling, he was in no condition to answer back. What better time to rub in the good news?

  Floyd cataloged the carnage with glee. “The Almighty’s will is writ large,” he concluded. “He wants us shut down pronto.”

  Percy was beside himself, his attempts at interjection digging metal into bone, tissue, and nerve ends. “Aaaa! Aaaa!” he howled in pain.

  “Why, Perce, is that the glorious sound of rejoicing?”

  “Aaaa! Aaaa!”

  “Aaaa! Aaaa! Aaaa-men!” Floyd winked to the heavens. “Thank you, Jesus.”

  Brother Percy grabbed the Gideon Bible on his nightstand. He was about to pitch it at his partner’s head, but Floyd cocked a fist. Percy cowered.

  “Blessèd are the meek,” Floyd reminded with a grin.

  Floyd stopped grinning with the arrival of the adjuster, Mr. Fischer. In the view of the United Dominion Insurance Company, the destruction of ministry property fell under the clause dealing with Acts of God. (“A subject about which you’re no doubt familiar.”) Floyd blanched. Dreams of a lucrative settlement were up in smoke, but so were plans to market tent squares. Without a final tour, how could they pitch the merchandise? And without the tent, truck, and generator, how could they have a tour?

  Complicating matters, work on Percy’s jaw had taken a bite from their reserves. Released from hospital that afternoon, the evangelist stooped to a dingy room in the cheapest digs he could find, the C.P.R. Hotel, a.k.a. The Ceeps. Floyd likewise swallowed his pride, and had management squeeze in a cot at the foot of his partner’s bed.

  After supper, while Percy prayed to the Almighty for deliverance, Floyd toddled downstairs to the hotel tavern to worship at the altar of Jack Daniels.

  The kid at the end of the bar was one cocky bantam. Vest open, tie loose, slick hair parted in the middle, he left off talking to the bartender, and plunked himself down at Floyd’s table. “K.O. Doyle,” he stuck out his paw. “I hear you’re Floyd Cruickshank, brains behind the preacher man.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m looking for a Mary Mabel McTavish. You know her?”

  “What if I do?”

  “I’d like to jog your memory,” Doyle said. He was with King Features Syndicate, a Hearst operation, up from Buffalo for a peekaboo. “A tousle-haired all-American tyke, right out of a Norman Rockwell, dies and gets brought back to life. The story’s a four-star wank-yer-crank, ’specially if the dame’s got stems.”

  “News travels fast.”

  “I got sources.”

  Doyle’s source, courtesy of King Features, was the telegraph operator in Wichita, Kansas, who took the cable Uncle Albert sent his sister.

  TIMMY HAD A DUST UP WITH MOTHER NATURE. THE FREE PRESS SAYS HE DIED AND GOT HISSELF RESURRECTED. HORSE FEATHERS. GRACE SENDS HER REGARDS. SHE IS HAVING A SPELL. ALBERT.

  A call from King Features to the Free Press confirmed the article. The paper offered to sell its copy, but the skeptical syndicate opted to send up a staffer for an independent fact check. After all, “Canadian news” was a contradiction in terms.

  Doyle had hit town that morning. Like travelling salesmen and other ne’er-do-wells, he’d checked into The Ceeps because it was cheap, next to the station, and came with a bar. After dropping off his bag — a change of underwear and a toothbrush — he went in search of the gal of the hour. According to the Free Press, Miss McTavish worked at the local private school. Doyle traipsed over, only to be confronted by the headmistress. “That damn Gorgon tore a strip off me,” he sputtered to Floyd. “Her butt’s so puckered, I’ll bet when she farts, she hits high C.”

  From there to the hospital. Doctor Hammond refused comment, but his broken nose told a tale, as did the shaken demeanour of a certain Nurse Judd.

  Doyle had better luck at Bethel Gospel Hall. The pastor was a hayseed with breath that would strip linoleum, but he was four-square behind the miracle; he also tipped Doyle to Tom and Betty Wertz. The couple made shy, but Doyle got past the front door when he said he was a lawyer come to offer his services cheap, on account of he’d heard the good doctor planned to charge Tom with assault.

  Last port of call: Timmy Beeford’s. Aunt Grace had the house sealed up tighter than a nun’s panties. But she’d overlooked Timmy’s upstairs bedroom window. Doyle lured the little nipper onto the verandah roof and got what he wanted with a couple of lemon sours.

  With enough for a column, Doyle skedaddled back to the hotel bar, phoned in what he had to King Features, and tucked into supper: a pickled egg washed down with a pail of suds.

  “You Canucks brew it strong,” Doyle told Floyd. “Then again, you gotta be pissed to live here.” He excused himself for a leak.

  “I couldn’t help but overhear.”

  Floyd looked up into the florid face of the drunk from the far corner. A big guy with a lumpy nose, the drunk slapped Floyd on the back. “Scoop Jones from Scripps-Howard. I got a quart of Four Roses in my room. Ditch the kid, come up for a nightcap. Give Scoop the scoop, get double for your trouble.”

  “Sorry, pal, I gotta hit the hay,” said Floyd, rising unsteadily from his chair.

  “A rain check then. Scoop Jones. Room 202.”

  As Floyd lurched to the elevator by the front desk, he heard the clerk say to the new arrival in the rumpled fedora, “Scratch Micallef, Associated Press? I must say, we’ve been getting a lot of newsmen lately. The bar is that way.”

  Wobbling down the hall to his room, Floyd felt a spot of envy. Some young missy’d grabbed the spotlight he and Perce had dreamed of. She’d be rich. Damn. There was nothing so cruel as the good fortune of others.

  However, Floyd was a visionary, not long for regret. By the time he fumbled his key into the lock, he’d had a flash. By the time the door swung open, it was a full-blown inspiration. And by the time he switched on the overhead light, he saw his career resurrected in glory. He was going to hitch a ride on Mary Mabel’s star, be her manager, be a millionaire.

  “Perce,” he cried, “get your ass in gear. If you want to save that damn ministry of yours, get on your knees and pray for God to bring us Miss McTavish. Tell Him to make it snappy. Given the shit He’s flushed our way, it’s the least He can do.”

  Percy tumbled out of his sheets. If this could save his pulpit, he’d get cracking like eggs at a diner.

  A few hours later, Percy prayed out and Floyd passed out, Herschel MacIntosh of the London Parks Department came pounding on their door, fresh from chasing lovers out of the fairground. “There’s bums in your tent. Any trouble, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  The
evangelists got to the site in no time. In the cab of their truck, they found a tramp in a dress. Percy was outraged when Floyd took up flirting. No way is that whoremonger going to fornicate at the foot of my bed with some hoboess, he fumed, as he checked the glove compartment for theft. That’s when he heard Floyd say the magic words: “You’re Mary Mabel McTavish?”

  Mary Mabel McTavish! Lo, the Lord had delivered her unto them, just as Percy’d prayed! The reverend’s eyes filled with tears. He had a direct line to the Almighty after all.

  The Call

  No sooner had Mary Mabel been introduced to the evangelists than they were interrupted by visitors. “It’s the Three Stooges,” Floyd whispered. “Don’t give them your name, or there’ll be trouble.” She decided to trust his advice: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

  “If it isn’t the gentlemen of the press,” the evangelist called out. “What brings you boys out on a 3:00 a.m. constitutional? The Londonderry air? Or are you after some London derrière?”

  “I’d ask the same of you,” the youngest snorted. “Who’s the doll?”

  Floyd grabbed her by the elbow. “Why, Mr. Doyle, this is a vagrant we caught on a tip.”

  Mary Mabel took her cue. Imagining herself the ruined heroine of The Fallen Shopgirl, she went knock-kneed. “Is you me Daddy?” she asked, clinging drunkenly to his lapels.

  “High on turpentine,” Floyd confided.

  Clucking tongues and shaking heads. How exciting! Mary Mabel decided to go all out. “I’ve been a bad girl, Daddy,” she pouted. “Take me home and spank me!”

  “I’m not your Daddy, child.”

  “We can purr-tend,” she hiccuped, and threw her left arm open to the newsmen. “Which one-ov-you wants to be my Daddy?” She batted her eyes.

  They took a step backwards, half-interested, half-afraid.

  “No takers?” she sobbed prettily. “Then I’m all alone in the big bad world, and me with a bun in the oven.” She shook her fist at the moon. “Curse you Billy Bounder!”

  Floyd stepped hard on her instep. “Shut your trap. Your Daddy’s in the county jail! And that’s where you’ll be headed too, soon as we raid the tent!”

  At word of a raid, the newsmen perked up. Floyd turned to his partner. “Lead the way, while I guard our potted Petunia. En route, you can regale the lads with your conversion stats.”

  That was all the encouragement Brother Brubacher needed. Despite his wired jaw, he puffed his chest and led the scribblers away with a spirited, if incomprehensible, account of his ministry.

  “Let’s make tracks,” Floyd whispered to Mary Mabel. Lickety-split, they did.

  “How did I do?” she asked, once clear of the park.

  Floyd laughed. “Lord love us, you peddle more ham than a meat market.”

  “Thanks, but you shouldn’t have stopped me before I’d made my speech about Billy Bounder. He’s the cad who ruined Agnes Boyle in The Fallen Shopgirl, chapter six.” Before Mary Mabel knew it, all the words that had been bottled up in her head since leaving the Academy came flooding out. She told him everything: about her books, her puppets, her papa, Miss Bentwhistle, and Academy theatrics. She even told him about being in “Auntie” Irene’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Milwaukee Little Theater Guild. “I was the fairy Peasblossom,” she babbled. “Bits of my wings kept falling off, but the grownups said I was very good just the same. I love play-acting. It sure beats scrubbing toilets for Miss B. Oh, I’m talking your ear off. You’ll be thinking I am high on turpentine. Where are we going?”

  “To the Thompson twins, to find you a bed.”

  “The Thompson twins?” Mary Mabel was over the moon. To meet the Twins was too delicious. She’d heard their tale when she was little, on a drive with Miss Bentwhistle and her papa. The Twins, one-time classmates of Miss B., were the spinster daughters of Mr. Ezekiel Thompson, a local pooh-bah whose cane had had a mind of its own. Despite much abuse, the Twins had devoted their lives to his care. “On his ninetieth birthday, the doctor pronounced him good for ninety more,” Miss Bentwhistle had confided. “Imagine the shock when that very night he got booked for the boneyard after tumbling down three sets of stairs and hitting his head with a shovel.”

  Financial hardship followed. Despite lives of service, Misses Millie and Tillie were left nothing but the family home, their father having bequeathed the rest of his estate to St. James, since “The Lord God can put it to better use than a couple of old maids.” Now living in poverty, they made ends meet by running a bed and breakfast that served visitors produce cultivated in their front garden.

  Floyd confided that because of their circumstances, the Twins suffered chronic sleep apnea. “You mustn’t worry if you hear strange noises in the middle of the night,” he said. “I’m frequently called upon to perform resuscitation.” He told Mary Mabel to crouch among the tomato plants while he knocked, on the excuse that he’d forgotten to discharge his bill when he’d left the past morning, and wanted to make amends before making introductions. As it turned out, the Twins were more than forgiving, until they saw Mary Mabel emerge from hiding.

  Floyd assured them that everything was above board: the girl had been abandoned by her father; he, a Good Samaritan, was looking for a home in which she could take refuge; as for the moment, he’d appreciate the use of their sitting room for a pastoral consultation.

  And so, with the Twins in the adjoining dining room chaperoning over a game of two-handed euchre, Floyd and Mary Mabel had tea. He inquired after Timmy Beeford’s resurrection, grilling her at length. “I trust you won’t take offense, but how much pretend would there be in all this?”

  “I’m no angel,” she replied, “but every word I’ve said is true. Standing up for that truth has cost me my home and family. You can believe me or not, I don’t care two pins. Now, if you’re through with the insults, I’d like the Misses Thompson to show me to my room.”

  “Hold on,” he said. “I’m certain of two things. First, you believe what you’re saying. Second, you have a calling.”

  Mary Mabel let out a hoot. “I have nothing, much less a calling.”

  “As God is my witness,” Floyd persisted, “I want you to be a partner in a new travelling revival show. I’ll produce, Brother Percy will sermonize, and you’ll be the star attraction.”

  The thought thrilled her. Nonetheless, she’d read about producers. “I can look in a mirror. I know what looks back. I’m nothing special, so don’t try to seduce me with my vanity.”

  “God doesn’t care about the wrapping paper. It’s the gift inside that counts. Yours is the gift of miracle. I want to help you bring that gift to the world.”

  “I was blessed with one miracle. I may never have another.”

  “I’m not asking for any. All you need to do is step on a platform and tell your truth. You’ve no need to be scared.”

  “I’m not,” she lied.

  “Yes you are. You’re afraid to fail, to be laughed at. It’s a fear born of sin! The sin of pride. Take courage! Pure hearts prevail! As for the jitters, your turn for the press proved you have nerves of steel. A life on the boards is yours if you’ll have it. Your food and lodging’ll be taken care of, and there’ll be money for as many books as you can read.”

  Mary Mabel bit her lip.

  “Picture Miss Bentwhistle’s face when you’re famous,” Floyd tempted. “Picture Clara Brimley and the other Academy brats as well. Your papa, too — he’ll come crawling, you mark my word, begging for you to take him back.”

  Mary Mabel barely realized she’d stopped breathing.

  “We live in a wasteland, Miss McTavish. Despair roams the land. Folks want a miracle to change their lives. You’re living proof that anything is possible. Join with me. Through our ministry we’ll offer hope. Dreams. The chance of a new start. Whadeja say? Will you give it a shot?”

  Mary Mabel prayed very hard. Her mama filled her head: “Say yes,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Mary Mabel gulped.
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  Floyd slapped his knee. “I’ll write up a contract to legalize our venture.”

  “That’s very kind.”

  “One little thing.” He hesitated. “When you talk about your resurrection, don’t mention your mama. Feel free to keep her in your heart, but give the glory to God.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t want folks thinking you’re crazy. Don’t get me wrong. I believe you. But it’s a cruel world.”

  “He’s right,” her mama told her. “Besides, it’s the truth. I’m your guardian angel. And who sends guardian angels if not God?” She had a point.

  “Have your papers ready for me in the morning.” And with that, Mary Mabel shook his hand and joined the circus.

  IV

  The HEARST PRESS

  The Chief

  William Randolph Hearst lay very still, staring up at the velvet canopy over his oak baldachin bed in the Gothic Suite of his castle at San Simeon. It was the middle of the night. His forehead glistened. Heart pounded. Was he awake? Was this a dream?

  Someone else was in the room. Millicent? No, his wife was in Manhattan, stowed away among the antiques in his three-floor apartment at the Clarendon. Marion? He slid his hand under the covers to her side of the bed. Empty. Of course — Marion was on a shoot with his Cosmopolitan Pictures in Burbank, wouldn’t be back till tomorrow. So who was in the room?

  He heard breathing. “Who’s there?” Was that a whisper in the air? He brushed his ear. A glimmer of moonlight slipped through the half-closed curtains casting a shadow by the Persian vase. Was it the stranger? Hearst sat bolt upright and yanked the chain on the lamp next to the headboard. The shadow vanished in the light. He peeked under the bed. Nothing. He was alone. The only eyes staring at him were the eyes from the photographs of his deceased parents, Senator George and Phoebe Apperson Hearst, and of the fourteenth-century Madonna by Segna sitting on his chest of drawers.