by Kirby Gann
Stop it! Cole yelled. Stop it! and he kept yelling until his brother stepped from the edge.
Relax, pup, nothing’s going to happen to me.
The picture of Fleece swaying on the ledge near Shady hovers in his eyes like a ghost image, the afterglow of a camera flash. The transformer hums nearby—it’s almost like a fizz—and the cemetery stands out only as a heavier darkness within the night’s ambient dark, and there is nothing more to see. He asks if Shady wants to go back inside. She responds with a slight shake of her torso he takes to mean no, her hands clasping either shoulder and her back to him. Cole watches her for a moment from the steps of the doorway. A sad feeling suffuses his gut and his chest and neck and he feels very alone, and wishes he knew how to make something happen, to force the world closer to how he wants it to be, to act with the momentum of certainty behind him. And as if the world were listening to his head the wind and rain starts again with new urgency, the sweep of it loud in the trees. Shady sprints back to join him under the rusted awning, laughing and extravagant. Within seconds lightning is peeling seams through the sky again, the thunder coming in giant claps.
Like something out of a movie, they decide. And romantic, thinks Cole. But every dulled insulated nerve in him understands she does not want to be touched. He tells her they should leave soon now that the police lights out front are gone. She wants to stay a little longer and watch the storm.
“Find your buddy if you can,” she says, and he turns to go. “Don’t get shot,” she adds, and that her concern for him is enough to speak of it buoys his mood.
He finds Spunk not far behind them, a spidery shadow standing outside the glow of his flashlight propped on the floor. Despite the fresh air flowing in from behind, the humidity in the corridor closes in and Cole’s skin bursts with sweat all over. This room must have been intended for prayer or meditation of some kind; a gallery of statues is set into the wall along one side with knee-wide benches before them. Spunk has torn one statue from its base and is trying to stand the thing up but it won’t stay put—to extract it he had broken off the feet. In his grasp the saint shines a milky blue, one hand clasping its robe, the other extended in blessing.
“You get on that?” he asks. Cole shakes his head even though his friend isn’t looking at him. “Figured you all wanted some privacy. Since we didn’t find your brother I figured I’d take this back to Daddy. Put it in the yard.” He releases the statue and it tips forward and he grabs it again before it falls. He twists his hand over the head and spins the saint like a top.
“What you think you’ll tell him?”
“Fleece don’t live here no more. Dude I do not believe Fleece Skaggs would ever try to rip off my daddy. I do not believe that. And if he did then there’s a whole shit-hurricane going to happen. My daddy is going to want to know.”
A deep intuition makes itself felt in Cole with surprising conviction. “He already knows,” he says. As he says it he realizes it must be true.
“Yeah? He knows so much then how come he sends us out here?”
Cole watches the bony hands batting the saint back and forth, a sculpted metronome. It’s hard to breathe in here after the time outside. Spunk begins to speak of other things, as he does when he doesn’t want to delve deeper into a matter, and Cole falls into his own thoughts, hypnotized by the movement of the footless statue ticking side to side. He cannot choose why Spunk would not tell him that his father knew plenty, that they are out here because the old man wants Cole to see for himself. He cannot put a why to this but again he feels convinced nevertheless.
“I don’t know what it is but something bad is happening, right here now as we stand doing nothing,” Spunk says.
The room fills with light. Cole hears no sound, it’s like he is a piece of film cut out of time and reinserted moments later, with his back sore on the floor and his head aching. An awful ring clangs in his ears, and when he moves his head it sloshes with crushed glass. His elbow is soaking in a puddle of rainwater and some of the pain seems to originate there. Several feet away, Spunk lies flat near the statue, the white saint spinning silent on the grimy floor.
Suddenly Spunk shoots to his feet. Cole can see his mouth moving rapidly but cannot quite dial in the frequency of his voice: the mouth moves but the words cannot get past the klaxon ringing in his ears. Spunk nears him and then retreats; dips near again but seems suddenly fascinated with his widespread hands. When his words eventually become clear Cole hears lightning, Spunk is chanting lightend-ing . He starts to dance in the room’s faint illumination, a dusky glow about them that Cole is unsure is hallucinated or actually in the world. Again Spunk holds out his hands, turning them back and forth and marveling at the fact of them. His face wrenches, his mouth curls into a mad scream, his feet hop as if over hot coals—until Cole’s hearing returns in a great wash and he recognizes Spunk laughing, laughing a feral laughter of the thunderstruck.
It takes time for him to regain his feet, his balance is skewed, but in time he rises with the help of a windowsill. Spunk kicks the head of his saint and sends it spinning faster, screeching laughter, when Cole thinks of Shady alone outside. And then, just as he starts out to find her, her high giggling squeal comes scurrying down the corridor in the dark. He can see her coming, too, her silhouette defined by a throbbing glow that confuses him, where could it come from, we are in the middle of the night, it’s as if some basic element of darkness has changed in a way he cannot identify. She skids to a playful stop and stands herself before him, her body haloed by pulses of light.
Come see, she says.
Of a Sunday morning Lawrence Greuel finds himself, somewhat to his own dismay and great amusement, seated in church—a renovated warehouse he remembers housing tobacco auctions when he was a kid—among over a thousand worshipful nabobs. And this is just the day’s first of three services, he understands, each near to standing-room-only. Above the stage, where a conventional church would have its proscenium, a video screen hangs for the benefit of those sitting in the back rows. A light show commences in garish primary colors: laser-bright pillars of choleric red, fertile green, and shucked-corn yellow track over faces and into the rafters as the band starts a boogie-woogie rhythm, grooving on a bass-driven blues riff and deep conga drums unlike any hymn Greuel has ever heard. Not that he remembers many. He has come partly out of malicious nostalgia; he has come to silently mock; most of all he has come for the tingle of a deal, the opportunity to make money, at the urging of his associate Arley Noe. Because Lawrence Greuel is on the downward curve of life—no, it’s more of a wild plummet from the high-dive—and he has a son who disappoints and embarrasses him. Yet he feels it incumbent upon him as a father to do what he can for the boy’s future once he, Lawrence Greuel, has become ashes.
He knew there was money in these new churches, but to see it on display . . . Arley Noe can spot an opportunity. Plenty of business still to be done on a Sunday.
The horn section joins in and the crowd starts to stamp and holler; the overhead pots dim; a white spotlight draws still on a corner of the stage constructed from carpeted risers. Then a stringy man springs into the light with arms raised high and open hands waving, a featherweight boxer entering the stadium for a championship bout. Welcome! he shouts joyfully, his voice through the headset microphone too loud for the speakers, booming with fuzz. I welcome—YOU! he shouts again, one finger drawing over the audience, the arm ramrod straight and sweeping across space, legs braced as though to keep him from stage-diving into the aisles. I welcome you, Christ welcomes you! Christ World Emergent welcomes you all to the prosperity promised in His name, amen!
The atmosphere is more like a midnight roadhouse than a ten AM worship service. The attendees are going nuts as the lights spiral and wheel with the magic of God’s miracles, and the musicians, Greuel must admit, jam like pros. The fulsome energy of Brother Gil Ponder is familiar to listeners of his weekly radio show, his face recognizable by the towering billboards that grace the interstates in th
ree counties (Are You Thriving as God Promised His Children? Visit Christ World Emergent and Embrace the Abundant Life), but to see the man in the flesh stirs even Lawrence Greuel’s indifferent heart. Ponder bounds past a podium and snatches a leather-bound book that he shakes above his head, then tucks beneath one arm as he makes the stairs to the first floor rows, not far from Greuel’s wheelchair, and where Noe and Grady Creed remain conspicuously seated. The preacher jogs across the front row, slapping hands and pumping his fist, stopping suddenly to cheers as he embraces an elderly woman on whom he bestows a kiss to the forehead, and she clutches his shoulders as if to hold on for all that life has left behind her. From this close vantage Greuel can discern the ex-junkie he knows Ponder to be and that no manner of good living can make up for; his eyes may sparkle blue in the spotlight but they are set deep in shadowed sockets and betray to Greuel’s experienced eye that indefatigable hunger that draws from the addict’s insides, that fanatical madness begging to be consoled. Ponder’s skull is a map set in relief beneath its lean skin, and he looks well older, up close, than his forty-two years.
Greuel vaguely recognizes the elderly woman’s escort though he can’t recall why—which he finds bothersome, as he’s the kind of man who prides himself on his ability to remember names and faces. It’s all the medications they’ve got him on, his brain’s turned to grated cheese. With careful indulgence the man rests a tan and manicured hand on the woman’s shoulder; in the next instant he is helping Brother Gil extricate himself from her grasp.
“Tell me who that man is,” Greuel tells Arley Noe.
“Well hell, that’s the preacher. That’s Gil Ponder.”
“I’m not talking about him, you blueskin hick bastard. The guy next to him.”
Noe follows Greuel’s nod to spot the man standing formal with his hand again on the woman’s shoulder. He’s tall, and completely bald in the hip urban fashion of the day, immaculately presented. Noe elbows Grady Creed beside him, who sits slumped low with his legs extended into the aisle, eyes half-shut and ankles crossed. The preacher moves into another aisle between sections, saluting some, handshakes or kisses to others, and Greuel is impressed by the stamina of the crowd’s gusto. He wonders if this preacher plans to greet each individual on the floor—in which case he’s out of here, he isn’t going to sit through that.
“Creed says he’s with some morning show, the funny one.”
“They bring out the celebrities, huh?”
“Like I told you,” Noe says.
“Like Creed told you,” snorts Greuel.
“We are here and it’s all happening,” he answers, the thing about him being that Arley Noe can’t be surprised or offended.
Greuel smiles. His scanning eyes alight on yet another recognized face, the young woman who had been in his home a week before: her bright hair, like a pat of apricot jam in sunlight, is impossible to miss. How girlish and pretty she looks now, with her hair down. Why would she ever sport a ponytail if she could look like that any time she wants to? A grievous shame, Greuel decides. She probably doesn’t realize how beautiful she is. His wife had been like that; her disavowal of her own beauty had made him sad. But why doll up? When you get down to it, is church the place for a woman to look her sexy best? Her name comes to him now: Beck. Something Beck, a friend of his son’s. He remembers her saying she was down with Hay-seuss, and he had been charmed. He smiles to see this wasn’t a put-on. Then he frowns. That’s the problem with kids—they believe in things.
Ponder quits the hands-on approach and waves to the seats in back as he returns to the stage, and Greuel has not heard this kind of bleacher stomping since a state-final basketball game. The musicians watch Ponder raise his arms again, Bible in one hand, fingers splayed in the other. With a nod to the band he turns back to the audience, and when his arms fall the music stops and the house lights come up. The applause continues in a great surge, then begins to teeter and fall, a stream trickling over many rocks, as Ponder pats the air with his hands, repeating that they should get this party started. He thanks them all for being there, for just being. The crowd doesn’t quiet until he announces, Let us pray, and begins the invocation.
“Dear God look at these beautiful people. Look at these folks in their finest come to honor Your name and Your Word on this beautiful Sunday morning with which You have blessed us. We ask You to watch over our congregation and to guide us in Your name and show us the way. Lead us to Your promised prosperity. Let me hear you say Amen.”
The audience complies as one. Greuel and Noe snigger as Grady Creed, surprising even himself, chimes in.
“What?” Creed shrugs them off, pouting, “Caint hurt can it?” He leans forward in his foldout chair as though wanting to hear the preacher better.
“The Lord guides us, friends. Even at those times we don’t think we can feel Him, He’s there looking over us all. I don’t know about you but I can feel His benevolent gaze right now, His all-seeing eyes on this house of worship. You know what He wants us to know? He wants us to know He’s there, guiding. He wants us to know that each one of us is precious to Him. I’ve been contemplating this for some time now, after meetings with so many of our members, good people who find themselves in a bind they didn’t ask for. A financial bind. Who here can’t relate to that business?”
Affirmative murmurs wave through the audience.
“People ask me about bankruptcy. That’s a spirit-killer right there, I don’t have to tell you. Bankruptcy. I listened to one gentleman the other day, a good man you can be sure, works two or three jobs, he could be sitting next to you just now. He was talking about his debts, the difficulties of making ends meet, balloon payments on too much house and the kids going to good schools—we all know if you want a child educated right you can’t chance that public school might send home some day some indoctrinated stranger who’s there to tell you everything you believe and been guided by is wrong. Am I right? And those private schools aren’t cheap, are they? Big government is happy to take our tax money and put it in every cause you don’t believe in, but you’re on your own if you want to give your child the best education money can buy, some place where you have a say in what he learns. I am right.”
Hurrahs scatter through the congregation, patches of applause flare and flutter about. Greuel’s attention is wandering already. On the altar up there, beside an untouched, empty chalice and what looks like a cross bound in leather, sets of car keys hang from a small stand, the logos of luxury manufacturers recognizable even from this distance: Acura, BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz. He understands none of it but likes the spirit of the place.
“It hurt my heart to see this good man,” Ponder continues. “We prayed together, went over his options—how do we do that? Come on, you know already. We opened our hearts together to the Lord. You know what happened then? God came into my heart. He spoke to me as He often does, and I’m not the only one. He said, ‘Hey there Brother Gil’ (that’s what He calls me, Brother Gil, He never says Mr. Ponder or anything formal like that), He says, ‘Why are you so concerned for this man and his situation? Sans souci, my child. I’ve got it taken care of.’ I said to him, ‘God I don’t doubt that, you know I don’t, but could you show me how to bring this man some peace so he can sleep at night?’ And then God points out that He addressed just this same issue a long time ago. He told me to check out Psalm sixty-six twelve.”
The preacher hoists his book aloft and sifts the pages. Around Greuel various attendees sift pages through their own bibles. When Ponder finds the desired verse he raises his free hand and signals to the audience with splayed fingers again.
“Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water: but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place. ‘How’s that strike you,’ God asked. I told Him He was the Man. He reminded me: God’s Will never leads you where God’s Grace will not protect you. And He reminded me again, ‘Check Deuteronomy eight-eighteen.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives yo
u the ability to produce wealth.”
Brother Ponder snaps his book shut and drops it on the podium with a resounding thud, satisfied to have argued an airtight case. His hands settle on each hip, elbows akimbo, and he bends toward his congregation. Stretched in this way, a spiking dark blue tattoo stripe creeps over his collar from beneath a swath of makeup. Greuel snorts.
“Doesn’t that make you feel a little bit better? Think about it: God made each of us—that’s a given. He doesn’t create us just to watch us flail and fail. That’s what mice and all His other little creatures are for. He made us in His image. What God wants for those in His image is a successful—no, not just successful, but victorious—course in this life. He’s always reminding His dim creations that if we would listen to Him, we are going to be all right. We’re going to be just fine, He’s already got it all figured out for us. ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for’—that was said by a man I think a few of you here have heard of. His name was Jesus and he’s saying: Sow your faith in Him. What’s that mean? It means: Don’t go hoping you’re going to change your situation overnight, buying lottery tickets with the chance you’ll score. Lottery winners, that’s just poor people with money. They get it only a while before it’s gone, because they’re not wealthy in the Holy Spirit. You have to be smarter than that.
“I want to get results.” He points his finger at the audience, allowing his words to ring around the open auditorium. Then he continues. “Isn’t that what we’re asking? Well God’s got the answer. He’s been telling us since Adam and Eve: ‘You want results? Come to Me.’ He’s saying, plant a little mustard seed—come on, folks, we all know the parable—plant a little mustard seed of faith. Sow your faith and reap great rewards. . . .”