~ 5 ~

        I dressed and set off toward downtown.  But before I got halfway, a rain set in—a spatter of heavy drops at first, and then the dark clouds let loose a toad strangler.  The only shelter nearby was in the doorway of a storefront church—The Temple of the Blood of the Cross written large in red paint across its long plate-glass window.  I pressed my back against the glass door and watched it pour the rain down, an arm’s-length away, splashing on my boots.
        A tap on the glass spun my head around face-to-face with a clean-cut feller showing a kindly smile and caring eyes that searched into mine a tad too deeply.  He motioned with a finger that he’d let me in.  The door swung outward and I had to scootch into the corner of the entryway against the bricks as he opened it.
        “Need some shelter from the storm, sister?”
        “That would be right Christian of you,” I tried to joke, hoping to appear less burdensome.
        He held the door while I scurried in, his smile warming even more, and he said, “We must not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk.”
        Stomping and skiving my boots on the floor mat, and swatting the rain off my denim jacket and jeans, I thanked him heartily.
        “Thank the Lord that we are here,” he gently corrected me.
        “Lordy, Lordy, thank you, thank you,” I said and chuckled clumsily, feeling that I’d maybe spoken without proper reverence.  
        Hunting for something else to say, I cast my eyes around the church.  The space, about sixty-foot square, once might have held a shoe store or a hardware.  A checkerboard floor of linoleum tiles gleamed with buffed wax.  In the back corner, kitty-corner to the windowless beige walls, sat a triangular red-carpeted foot-high stage with a homemade pulpit on it.  Out in front, several rows of stackable brown chairs awaited the congregation.  And at the opposite wall, a few fold-up banquet tables awaited their offerings.  Along the front side, cheery gingham drapes hung across the lower half of the plate-glass.  Only the ceiling looked the worse for wear—a few of the textured white panels missing from the metal frame they hung on, exposing wiring and girders.  Also, above a closet-sized privy in the back corner, several panels sadly sagged with splotchy yellow stains from a roof leak. 
        “Nice place you have here.  My name’s Annabelle Cory.
        “I’m Pastor Tom.  You from around these parts?”
        “No...” I hesitated, wondering how he’d react to the truth.  But he was too nice to fib to.  “I’m with that carnival outside of town.”
        “I see,” he said, his wide smile of welcome converting to a narrower one containing concern.  “I would hazard a guess then that you haven’t yet been saved by the blood of our Lord?”
        “Well, I can’t rightly say, Pastor Tom.  I was brought up Baptist, and I’ve been to boodles of Sunday-go-to-meetings.  So I reckon I’m in pretty-good shape with the Lord Jesus,”  I told him, trying to stave off what I knew would be coming.
        “But have you brought Jesus into your heart?  Have you renounced the sins of the world and accepted His forgiveness?  Has His blood—shed on the cross for you and us all—has His blood blessed your soul with eternal life in our Father’s kingdom?”  His smile, now struggling to stay aloft, grew tighter, and his voice, reaching for the spirit on high, grew louder and more righteous.
        “Well, I can’t rightly say....”
        “My child.  My child.  The rains of heaven have washed you into our humble place of worship.  Oh how the Lord works in mysterious ways.  And how I pray that His mystery of salvation shall soon be in your heart.  Praise Jesus.  Praise Jesus.  You have been delivered unto His word.”
        “I was just trying to keep from getting wet.”
        “So say you now.  So say you now.  But when the fire of the Holy Spirit comes to you, together we shall rejoice upon the ways of the Lord.”
        I reckoned that this parson wasn’t one to hang up his fiddle shortly.  And it still rained buckets outside.  His preaching took to vexing me some, so I went at it from another angle.  I asked him something that had always been a puzzle to me—“Pastor Tom, how is it that nailing the Son of God up on a cross can make me live in heaven forever?”
        The question set him back on his heels.  He blinked his eyes like he couldn’t believe his ears, and then said, “God sacrificed his Son for the salvation of our souls.”
        “But how does killing Jesus save our souls?”
        He looked me hard in the eyes and told me, “Jesus Christ is not dead.  He arose on the third day and ascended into heaven.”
        “So then... he didn’t die?”
        “He died on the cross and then arose from the grave on the third day.”
        “Okay, okay.... That being so, how does his blood and death save us from hellfire?”
        “God demands sacrifice from man.  In the Old Testament, Abraham was told to sacrifice his only son.  But God replaced Abraham’s son with a ram.  In our new covenant with God, the glorious blood of His Son washes away our sins.”
        “So you’re saying that if we kill things for God, then He’ll let us live in paradise forever.”
        “No.  I’m saying that Jesus, His only begotten Son, gave His life for us.”
        “Jesus committed suicide?”
        “No!  The Romans and the Jews condemned Him.”
        “So Jesus didn’t give His life, it was taken?”
        “Young woman, I see that logic, the spider’s web of this world, has trapped you in bewilderment.  Faith in the truth is the only way to resolve your confusion.  The Word of God as written in the Bible is where your answers lie.”
        “Pastor Tom, I’ve read the Bible.  Not the whole thing cover to cover, but most parts, and all four Gospels.  And it appears to me that Jesus was a wonderful person, and said and did marvelous things.  But I just don’t get how the blood from nailing Him to a cross would work to my benefit.  How the heck would Romans and Jews murdering Jesus save my soul from going to hell?”
        “Believe, and it shall be!” he thundered off the cinderblock walls.
        We stared empty-eyed at each other for a spell, and then I said, “Well, I guess that’s about the size of it.... Thanks for getting me out of the rain.  It looks like it’s slowing down some.  I’d best be on my way now.”
        I turned and walked out the door and down the wet sidewalk without looking back.  The rain still fell heavy, tires hissing past, downspouts gurgling.  I scooted from doorway to doorway, skirting close under the eaves.  By the time I reached the restaurant, my jacket shoulders were sobby, my boots squishy, and my hair clung dripping.

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        Through the dark, we wound our way back behind the line-up, where the ground wasn’t so churned up, to the saggy G-top.  Pushing through the gap in the sidewall, we stepped into its bright lights and raucous voices.
        Atop the trampled grass, which mercifully felt only damp, Blackie’s bar was elbow-to-elbow,  most of the tables were taken, and carnies filled the chairs around the poker game.  The rattly fans of a pair of electric heaters, tied back-to-back on a tent pole, breathed out scorched air from red-hot wires.  
        We sidled up to the bar, where several fellers pronged Walt with some funning—“There’s the jailbird.”—“He’s a-goin’ from one joint to th’ other.”—“At least the jailhouse is dry.”
        Walt just shouted, “Ahh!  Fuck ‘em all.  The fix is in.”  And he ordered us beers.
        The G-top held a much more antic bunch than the night before—clamorous and caterwauling, drinking firewater to burn away the dank in their flesh and spirit after hours of standing around with wet feet, hunched against the chill, the time plodding along through the do-nothing night.  The gather-all bore out that misery loves company.
        I spotted Isis at a table near the heaters, caucusing with Sonny McCain.  I wandered over after Walt’s attention locked onto the poker table.  She wore her emerald-green robe cinched snug around her waist, but with the hood down—her cheery eyes and cheeks peeking through her fine-spun silvery mane.
        When she saw me she warbled, “My dear young Annabelle.  How are you holding up on this terribly inclement evening?”
        “Fair to middling.”
        “Would you like to sit with us?”
        “Yes, Ma’am.  Thanks.  Mighty kind of you.”  And I plumped down on a chair.
        “Do you know our illustrious illusionist, and show-boss scion, Sonny McCain?”
        “We met today at the cookhouse.  And I’ve seen your show, Mr. McCain.”
        “Just Sonny’s fine.  You’re with Walt, right?”
        “Yes, sir.”
        He turned to Isis, “Did you hear they arrested Walt for hammerin’ some sense into that wrangy hillbilly.”
        “You don’t say...”
        In the know, I told them, “The fix is in.  Walt just has to go through the motions.”
        “And what are the motions?” Isis asked.
        “I don’t rightly know, ma’am.  Tonight they put him in handcuffs and took him down to the jailhouse for about an hour.”
        Sonny said, “I heard Carl and the old man talkin’ ‘bout him havin’ to show up for kangaroo court Friday.”
        “That’s what I hear, too,” I said.
        He added, “They’ll just parade him in, pound on their chests, cast the shame and glory of repentance upon his sins, and cut him loose.”
        “I sure hope so, sir.”
        “Annabelle,” he said, fire building in his eyes, “There ain’t no doubt about it.  This county—as well as most all the others in this God-fearin’ state, as well as most all the counties in all the countries in the whole wide world—this county’s as corrupt as they come.  This show wouldn’t be sittin’ here on this damn mudlot, the joints workin’ strong, the kootch show strong, the G-top with Ohio beer and cash gamblin’—unless that judge got his cut.”
        “So I’ve been told, sir.”
        “Please call me Sonny.  Now, Annabelle, I’m gonna tell you somethin’ else.  What burns my ass is those people gettin’ their bag money, actin’ like they’re so almighty righteous—upstanding citizens, town fathers, pious Sunday-go-to-meeting gladhanders—and they’re the biggest fuckin’ hypocrites alive, with pre-paid tickets straight to hell.”  His gaunt face gone wide-eyed, he slapped a hand on the table, his beer can doing a little hop.
        “I eat real fire.  I shove real needles through my flesh, real spikes up my nose, real swords down my gullet.  And these idiots say that I’m a fake?  They think we’re the thieves?  They think we’re the devil?  
        “We pay off Satan every week.  He’s right there in that fuckin’ courthouse, gettin’ his cut of all the action in town.  Sharin’ some with the preacherman on Sunday.  Lordin’ it over the peons, and puttin’ the razzle-dazzle on ‘em with gaffed-up democracy.”
        Isis said, “Sonny, calm down.  Your eyeballs are going to pop out of their sockets.”
        “That’s gonna be my new act in the sideshow.  A pop-eye.  I’ve been workin’ on pushin’ ‘em out.  Look.”  He bugged out his eyes, the lids peeling back over the whites.
        Isis sniggered and said, “I’ve seen plenty of pop-eyes and you ain’t even close.”
        “Gimme a while and I’ll get pop-eyed enough to get a rise out of these yokels.”
        Isis laughed her high hee-hee, saying, “You’ll really have to pay off the sheriff after he’s seen that face.”
        Still making bug-eyes, he tilted the last of his can of beer down his throat, and then said, “I gotta git back to the trailer and practice it some more.  An artist ought not blunt his thrusts of creation.”  Then he sprang to his feet, whistling ‘Popeye the Sailor Man’.
        As he left, Isis and I shared a chuckle, and she said, “Sonny’s one of the good ones, though a bit of a grouser.”

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copyright © 2012 by S.M.Fernand