That jolted a memory.
Services at the Church of Best Licks are open; visitors to town are few and strange faces on a Sunday morning are rare enough to be remembered. But we have yet to turn anyone away.
Five or six months earlier there had been a visitor who fitted no known category. He was dressed for the mountains, but everything he wore was new and he had the hands of a city dweller. He entered late and left early and offered no explanations and none were asked. Best Licks is that kind of place. He turned up again three Sundays in a row, and I was beginning to wonder if we had a potential recruit who couldn’t get up the courage to say so. By the fourth week, I was seriously considering ways and means. But he didn’t come back.
“Sermons,” I said. “Three of them? From a few months back?”
“And interviews,” she nodded. “Sam sent a private detective up there to the Sierra, to find out what you were doing and what people there thought of you. And when he was done we called Sue Harriet, and she read the reports and listened to the tapes with us, and no one had any doubts that you were just the one they’d been looking for.”
“They?” I said. “Holy Joe, too?”
She glanced away from me, waffling. “He knew he was in trouble,” she said. “And lately he had got into the habit of doing what she—Sue Harriet—told him. He didn’t hear all the tapes, no. But he heard the sermons. And he could see how they would be on television...and that’s why I called you a liar, lover. Because you thought about it. Joe Gillespie made you an offer, and you turned it down. Sure. But like you used to say, ‘Let’s not kid the troops, okay?’ ”
And I was stuck for an answer.
She was right. It’s nice to be able to think pleasant thoughts about yourself, and I enjoy it as much as anyone. More, maybe. But honesty has to come in somewhere, and I had taken a moment or two longer than was strictly necessary before turning down Holy Joe’s offer. I had thought about it. And been tempted.
“He put it well,” I said. “A louder voice. A chance to do the same things I’m doing now...but on a much larger scale.”
“So why turn it down?”
“Because it’s bullshit. The Voice of Heaven on Earth didn’t originate that ‘louder voice’ line, you know. He told me where he’d heard it: The words came from Francis Carrington Shaw, when Shaw wanted to set him up in the television preaching business all those years ago.”
“Does that make it wrong?”
“Not necessarily. I wasn’t there at the time, and I don’t know what Joe Gillespie was doing then or how he was doing it. The work he described sounded reasonable. Effective. A storefront mission to people who couldn’t stay away from a craps table. Worth something, especially in this town, if it worked at all. And he said it seemed to.”
“Well, then...?”
“But that’s the point, Maxey. A little storefront mission is one thing. That Heaven on Earth compound out there is something else entirely. Nothing in common.”
“They both help people.”
“Do they?”
“You said yourself—”
“I said the mission was worth something because it helped people. Save souls? Don’t ask me. I knew all about that once—back before ’Nam and a lot of other things—but I’ve been losing ground ever since, and now what I know is about people if it’s about anything at all, and more and more I wonder if I even know about that.”
It was more than I had intended to say, but Maxey was still listening and I didn’t seem to be able to stop.
“Holy Joe was helping people there in that storefront. The work had its own logic and its own demands—personal contact and personal attention to individual needs. Personal caring. Personal advice.
“Amplify that voice, and how personal can it be?
“Oh, sure, the message may be the same. But the logic and the demands of television are not those of a storefront church. Television is show business. Entertainment. No reason, of course, that it can’t do good work and be a help to people. None at all. But it is different. The storefront pastor knows he’s won a real battle with real stakes when he sees one—just one—more human being standing tall and living a life instead of pissing it away.
“The television minister, no matter what his denomination and regardless of orientation, can only read his mail. Or have it read for him. And check the Nielsen ratings. And audit the books for the incoming donations. And that’s the battle he’s supposed to tell himself he won. Still nothing really wrong. But for someone else, Maxey...not for me.”
“Television evangelists do good work.”
“Do they?”
“Of course they do, and you know it! They bring a whole church to people who wouldn’t otherwise get out of their houses, maybe even out of bed, to go on their own. Their sermons—”
“Maxey, for God’s sake!”
“You said it, I didn’t.”
“And I’ll say it again. For God’s sake, what do you think a church is—four walls where you sing a couple of hymns and listen to someone lecture once or twice a week, and then hand him your money after he’s spent half an hour telling you that money is a snare and a delusion? Nice work if you have the stomach for it. A good living, no pain and no strain. No carrying heavy stuff up and down stairs and you get invited out to dinner a lot. Is that it?”
“Well...”
“Well, hell! It’s part of the deal, sure. About two percent. Maybe. And it’s important. It counts. But a couple of hours on a Sunday morning is no occupation, not even if you add in the time spent writing the sermon and hearing confessions and hustling the really big sinners for the really big bucks that keep the whole thing afloat. That’s the icing, not the cake. The real work begins when that’s all done and forgotten.”
Maxey was honestly puzzled. It showed in her face—in her eyes, which had turned violet again—and in her voice. “What are you talking about?” she said.
“I’m talking about what the real ministers of this world really do to justify drawing breath and occupying space,” I said. “I’m talking about sitting in a hospital room with a man whose wife is dying and she can handle it but he can’t and maybe the best thing you can do is just be there to talk to, or maybe there’s something more, but either way, you sit there and you do your best and maybe once in a while it helps.
“I’m talking about going down into the toughest part of the toughest town you ever saw to pull your stupidest and most self-destructive parishioner out of whatever kind of cesspool he’s landed in this time, when your every human instinct is to leave him there because, what the hell, you don’t even like him much in the first place and you’d much rather punch his lights out for getting you up in the middle of the night.
“I’m talking about trying to get a word of sane counsel through to a couple of kids who just want you to shut up and get on with the wedding rehearsal, and I’m talking about watching it go sour for them and then standing firm and trying to heal and patch and back and fill when love doesn’t really conquer all and he doesn’t make enough money and her breath’s bad in the middle of the night.
“I’m talking about fighting for the life of some poor bastard who’s just lost the job he held for twenty-eight years and he thinks it’s the end of the world and now he’s sitting out in the garage of his house sucking on the barrel of a 45 automatic he never really learned to use while he was in the army but brought home for a souvenir.
“I’m talking about talking to some pregnant teenager who just tried to kill herself because she can’t face her parents, and somehow—some damn how, it’s different every single time, believe it—getting her to see that the life she’s throwing away is worth living and isn’t hers to keep or reject, and maybe even taking her the tiniest first step along a road that might just possibly make her a grown-up.
“And I’m talking about failing.
“I’m talking, by God, about losing every one of those fights and maybe all the others, too, because you’re only a human being, not Jesus
Christ or God Almighty or the Enlightened One or any of the others, but just a poor dumb son of a bitch like anyone else. I’m talking about losing those fights and accepting the loss...and going right out there the next day and busting your butt the same way all over again because that’s what you signed on to do and you keep your promises, if nothing else.”
It was a long speech and a pretty self-righteous one for a man whose congregation—if that’s what it is—fits none of the above categories and never will. But Maxey listened and spent a second or two thinking it over before she spoke.
“So the television preachers are dog shit?” she said.
“No. At least, not just because they appear on the tube. A part of what they do is legitimate, and there are plenty of people who bless the invention of television because it brings them the only kind of church service they can possibly attend.
“And you can make a pretty good case that many, many others find something on the tube that they never found in the churches they attended once or twice a year for most of their lives.”
“So...?”
“So if the story could stop there it would be wonderful and the lion would lie down with the lamb, but this is the real world and that’s not how things really go.
“Television is power.
“Say it slowly. With reverence.
“It sells cars and soap and presidential candidates, and it changes minds and mores, and if you shake it just right, it is a money machine—and that, dear friends, is power of a kind Alexander and Caesar and Napoleon only dreamed about. The television evangelist, with his audience of millions watching and listening with open minds and uncritical hearts, can move mountains. Literally! You don’t have to run for president and you don’t have to turn your believers into a pack of book burners and film censors in order to make that power felt. All you really have to do is show them the mountain that stands in the way, and they will take it apart for you with kitchen spoons.
“That’s power!
“And that’s where it can all go wrong in a hurry, because if enough people nod you yes enough times over enough years it’s only natural to get the idea that yes is the only possible answer to anything you might say or do and that you have some kind of special dispensation that sets you apart from the rest of humanity and exempts you from the rules that apply to the common herd.
“That’s when you start buying Rolls-Royces and paying blackmail and going on international shopping sprees and building air-conditioned doghouses with the money those poor damn fools did without clothes or decent medical care or maybe even food to send to you, and when you get caught, the best you can offer is ‘Well, those good friends of ours wanted us to have these nice things.’ ”
Maxey was sitting perfectly still, looking astonished, and when I paused for breath I found that I was more than a bit surprised, too. I hadn’t realized all of that was inside me, or how badly it needed to get out.
And there was still more to come.
“The real crunch, though, comes when the donations slack off a little,” I said. “When the mail is lighter than usual and the high-powered CPA who handles your books says you might not be able to buy the new DC-nine you had your heart set on. That’s when the nitty gets pretty gritty.
“That’s when the faithful start getting telephone calls from a voice that sounds like yours but is really an electronic gimmick. That’s when you start with the sermons about how we must all trust in God to provide the funds to save this ministry and keep it on the air.
“That’s when God turns out to be an extortionist who will kill you if you don’t raise a few more million.
“And that’s when you suddenly remember how you’ve been raising people from the dead for all these years but just never thought to tell anyone about it until now.”
The car was getting hot, and I was done.
Empty.
And feeling better than I had since the first moment we had entered the simulated pearly gates of Heaven on Earth. I rolled out of the car and stretched my legs and looked—the garage, like most others in the Southwest, had no outer walls—at the first red–and–yellow streamers of what seemed likely to be a long desert sunset.
Maxey got out and locked her door and slammed it and glanced at the sky and turned toward the hotel without a word.
I followed.
We entered by the VIP garage elevator, moving in a bell jar of silence that followed us to Maxey’s floor.
But at the door to her room she turned and grinned at me.
“Goddamn you,” she said.
“I suspect that may already have been attended to.”
She stood still, looking at me out of those color-changing eyes, still smiling with the corners of her mouth.
“Gillespie needs you,” she said. “Sue Harriet was his last hold on the world. He’ll drift right over the edge now, if someone doesn’t take hold.”
“Not me.”
“You could turn it around. Do anything you want. Move mountains, like you said.”
“No.”
She stopped talking, but the ghost of the smile persisted and the eyes faded slowly from violet to deep blue. She handed me her key, and I turned it in the door and opened it and she moved inside.
“Impossible bastard,” she said. “No wonder I’ve stayed in love with you for all these years.”
The eyes shifted back to violet as she closed the door firmly in my face.
We had a date for dinner, and I used the elevator time on the way to my room for thinking, but it didn’t get me anywhere and by the time I reached my own door I was already telling myself to give up.
Lots of questions.
No satisfactory answers.
And not enough information to make a decent guess. But of course I had to make a few, and that is what was going on while I opened the door to my own room and moved inside.
Which is how people get hurt.
The door was closed and latched behind me before the watch dog senses could break through the wall of foolishness to let me know I had visitors.
One in the chair across the room.
The other just inside the entry way, with a hand that clamped onto my upper arm in what might have been friendly contact but wasn’t.
Dinner with Maxey seemed likely to be postponed.
A SERMON
(CONTINUED)
Years ago, in what we now think of as the infancy of motion pictures, it was easy to tell the bad guys from the good guys. Especially in westerns. The bad guys wore black hats; the good guys wore white ones. But then the movies began to grow up...
TWENTY-ONE
They were dressed like twins in pastel slacks, polo shirts, and blazers, and the one in the chair was smiling. But the one attached to my arm wore no expression at all in a pair of hazel eyes that looked like polished glass.
I stood still and waited.
“Manny Temple’s upstairs,” the one in the chair said, still smiling. “He’s real anxious to talk to you and he’ll be getting impatient. We been waiting nearly three hours.”
It was semi-polite speech and a reasonable request, and I tried to answer in kind.
“Give Manny my regards,” I said. “And tell him I’ll be along soon as I dust the century plant and wind the cat.”
The grip on my arm got tighter, but its owner seemed to leave oral communication to his partner.
“Manny, he’ll be waiting,” the talker said, lumbering out of the chair and stretching himself. There was a lot to stretch. I’m not short, but he and his silent companion had two or three inches on me in height and perhaps a fifty percent advantage in weight. Size and body control left a clear impression of athletics on a professional level, and scar tissue just below the brow ridge named the sport.
“We’ll go now,” he said.
The silent one took two steps, turning me in the direction of the door, and I went along with the motion while gathering hara in the belly and bringing my reflexes to speed.
Screw them.<
br />
And Manny, too...
Fun is fun and you shouldn’t play cards for a living if you can’t take a joke, but the whole thing was starting to get out of hand. Ridiculous. I had been in Las Vegas a little more than a day, and in that time there hadn’t been a single moment when someone or other wasn’t manipulating, shoving, hauling, or generally jerking me around, and it was getting to be a crashing bore and besides, Manny—of all people—should have known better.
My nontalking handler completed the semi-circular maneuver that brought him abreast of me facing the door, but seemed to stumble over my left foot as he started to move me through the entryway. The foot he brought forward to save himself got tangled, too, and the hand that could have saved him was still clamped to my arm. I was holding it there, bracing my legs and back to accelerate the motion and turn it into a descending curve as he lost his balance and fell forward.
I caught a fleeting impression of puzzled incomprehension as he went down, but the contact was fleeting and disappeared entirely as his head made contact with the doorknob.
Lights out.
The world had slowed down for me again, and there was a feeling almost of leisure as I turned to deal with the talker. But he was quicker than I had expected and coming in on my blind side and I sensed the punch he had aimed at my neck only in time to intercept it with my shoulder instead of evading it entirely and then wasted another moment lecturing myself on the vanity of overconfidence.
Stupid...
I decided I had been right about him being a former pro boxer. Light-heavy, maybe, though he was carrying enough weight now for the big-money division. His feet moved naturally into the ninety-degree stance they teach you around the training gyms, and the way he planted the heel of his right foot gave me plenty of warning this time about the combination he was going to throw. I lifted my hands in what he must have thought was a familiar stance and kept my eye on his face as his left flicked toward me, and moved a little to counter it in the way he expected...but kicked his right knee out from under him instead.
He was game. And still quick. Going down, he made a right-handed grab for my crotch that could have turned the afternoon into a long one, but it missed by several inches and left him wide open for the knee I bent into the path of his face. That connected solidly, and I felt the gray mist that flooded suddenly into the space where he lived.
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