Always Leave ’Em Dying (12 page)

Jo stopped humming and I saw a grin starting to grow.

I looked at Randy. "So . . . so soon?"

"I'll be back in time to drive you down to the meetin'."

He left with Olive, tires screeching.

Jo said, "We're alone again."

I said, "So what?"

She laughed. And told me.

"Look," I said. "I just got all dressed, for one thing. For another, I had a tough night last night and I've got a big night coming up; and if I had any strength left, which I don't, I'd save it."

She was gurgling and moving around over there, and my voice was getting weaker. "Tell you what," I said. "You just do a dozen laps or so all by yourself while I sit here and watch. It'll be something new, something different for you. Who knows? You might get a hell of a charge out of it."

Damn that woman. She knew that the way to a man's heart was not through his stomach, but through his eyeballs, and she was walking toward me, slowly, artistically, hips swaying, everything swaying.

"You're trying to sway me," I said, "but I warn you, I intend to be firm, I refuse to budge. Anyway, I'm all tuckered out. I'm pooped. Well, what do you know?"

Jo wasn't walking toward me any longer. That would have been impossible, because she was sitting on my lap. Facing me, she said, smiling, "I'm not going anywhere, Shell. So stop worrying."

"Who's worrying?"

The Trammelite grounds had a different look about them at night. It was a quarter of eight when Hunt, driving me in his car, swung into the oil-surfaced road leading to Trammel's tent, the second time I'd been here in less than thirty-six hours. Other cars were ahead of and behind us; dozens of men and women walked alongside the road and over the grass, headed for the big tent where I'd beefed with Trammel and his Guardians yesterday. It was fifty yards ahead, brightly lighted, jazzy organ music pulsing from it.

"Good enough, Randy," I said. "I'll climb out here."

He pulled over to the edge of the road and stopped. "Sure you don't want me to go in with you?"

"No, thanks. I'll let you know what happens."

I got out and he made a U-turn and left. In addition to my black suit and hat, I wore the dark raincoat, collar turned up to shield my face. It wasn't raining, but already I'd seen guys dressed in everything from overalls to green suits and overcoats. I didn't expect a raincoat to set me apart.

Inside the tent, I found an empty chair about halfway down toward the stage and scooted in. It was five minutes till eight, when the meeting would start, and almost all available seats were filled. I guessed that close to two thousand people were here, latecomers still straggling inside. The crowd looked like two thousand, but smelled and sounded like more.

All along the tent's left side, the bottom six feet of canvas had been raised off the ground and folded back, then attached to the canvas above, so that there was a six-foot-high open space extending the length of the tent. There was nothing but blackness out there on my left now, but I knew from my talk with Randy and Olive that at eight o'clock there'd be enough light so the assemblage could feast its eyes on Trammel's customary exit from the Truth Room and his stately progress here. I'd assumed the canvas was raised so we could see him start his act, but it seemed likely now that the open space was at least partially for ventilation. The air was warm, heat from the massed bodies a cloak around me, the sound of hundreds of voices a constant murmur.

Organ music still swelled above the buzz of conversation. Draped gray cloth hung from the tent top down to the rear of the stage where I'd jawed with the Guardians. Suddenly the organ swung into a spooky number that the assembled Trammelites seemed to recognize. The buzz of conversation stopped and I heard voices singing in harmony. At the right of the stage about twenty people clothed in gray robes were singing something about the All-High. This was the choral group, in which Felicity Gifford had sung just three nights ago.

Most of the people present were looking past the open left side of the tent, and as I followed their gaze, light grew until it bathed the grounds, fell on the black mass of the Truth Room, and barely touched Arthur Trammel's house beyond it.

I could see Trammel clearly as the doors of the Truth Room opened. He stepped through them and began to walk with slow, measured steps toward us. His approach was perfectly timed so that the choral group's song ended abruptly as he walked inside the tent. In silence, he mounted wooden steps at the left edge of the platform.

As he reached the top step, he paused briefly to pick up something on a small table, then walked to the stage's center, adjusting the thing on the front of his chest. When I saw the length of fine wire trailing out behind him, I knew that he'd picked up a portable microphone; no good revivalist these days would be caught dead without a portable mike.

Trammel stopped in the middle of the stage, faced the crowd, raised both hands palm-out above his head. He stood in complete silence for a moment, then lowered his arms to his sides.

"My friends," he said.

It sounded familiar, but by the time I remembered where I'd heard the phrase before, Trammel was going on: "My followers, my fellow Trammelites. I bid you welcome. Welcome to the house of the All-High."

He went droning on, spouting similar stuff, all of it innocuous enough. He wore a black robe, but his face was still the same hungry-buzzard mess, even from where I sat. This far from him, those close-set eyes looked almost like one misshapen orb in the center of his narrow head; his bushy eyebrows waggled.

There was a rustle of movement at my left and I saw the plate—actually a wicker job about the size of a bushel basket—being handed down the row toward me. I was broke, and I wouldn't have dropped anything into Trammel's kitty anyway, so I passed it along, keeping my head down and hoping nobody would notice and hiss at me. I saw a lot of bills covering the change, if there was any change. While the All-High intoned the information that any offerings would be used toward completion of the Eternal House, which would "last through the ages," I estimated the average tip, multiplied it by two thousand, then by six nights, then by fifty-two weeks, and got anywhere from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to a half million. At that point, I started listening more intently to what Trammel was saying. This guy was big business.

He was just starting to give the business to his followers. The plea for offerings was over, the main event was on, and it was getting sexy. I soon admitted that Hunt had been right: This stuff really revived a man. The air was heavy, thick, and Trammel's voice cut through the silence. "Lust is the sin, the ugly sin of man. He lusts after all things, after the flesh of animals for his gluttonous belly, and the flesh of women for his evil loins. Woman, if with his hands he does not despoil your flesh, if with his body he does not violate your body, then with his eyes he strips you naked and sins on you in his mind." You would have thought he was talking about me.

Trammel's voice, usually so melodious and smooth, had become harsh, gasping. His phrases rose and fell in the time-tested chant of the revival preacher who knows how to stir the blood but not the brain. From individuals in the crowd came cries of assent and approval; cries of "Oh, Lord!" and "Amen!" and "Hallelujah!"

It wasn't difficult to guess that the women here were experiencing, in varying degrees, a vicarious ecstasy. For I had to admit that Trammel was good; he was sensational. If this had been in one of the books Trammel was so anxious to ban, he'd have banned it in a hurry.

On my left, a fat woman stared toward the stage, her dry-lipped mouth half open, her breathing gusty. Beyond her, another woman wrung her hands nervously together.

Trammel was charging about now, waving his arms and screaming, his words amplified by the microphone against his chest. "We have been chosen to cleanse the land. We must seek out sin and destroy it. Only then will the Kingdom of Heaven be ours!"

There was more, much more, the age-old emotional mumbo-jumbo. Then he left the stage and walked up the left aisle, still shouting and ranting, peering into the faces of those he passed. He walked right up toward the row where I sat, and before I ducked my head down practically between my legs, I noticed that the long thin electrical cord ran out neatly behind him so that none of his words would fail to be amplified through his portable mike. He walked clear around in back and down the other aisle almost to the front row of seats before he retraced his steps, gathering up the hellishly long cord, which reached to speakers up front. Finally, though, he was back on the stage and I started breathing normally again.

By the time he finished—having included a few gasps about scarlet women and fallen women for the titillation of males present—there was more noise coming from the crowd than from Trammel.

The verbal orgy was followed by half a dozen songs, among them "Open the Gates and Let Me In," and the All-High thing, which I now supposed was Trammel's theme song. After that, he called on those who were afflicted to come to the stage. At first I didn't know what he meant, but then I saw them: a man on crutches, a woman in a wheelchair, a blind man tapping the aisle before him with his red-tipped cane, a young boy with pimples on his face. Twelve people lined up on the stage.

Trammel walked among them. Trammel cried that the healing power was in his right hand, and that he, the All-High, would heal the afflicted. Then he passed his right hand over the boy's pimpled face. The pimples didn't drop off. Trammel cried that sometimes the healing power had to work for a day or two. Trammel ran his hand over the legs of the man on crutches, who threw away his crutches, took two steps, and fell down. But he was helped to his feet, tottered off the stage unaided, and took a few more steps before he sank into an aisle seat. Trammel did pull off one good job, which wasn't bad for twelve tries. He spent quite a bit of time on the blind man, shouting in a booming, hypnotic chant that he would bring sight to the dead eyes. He pressed his hands for almost two minutes over the sightless eyes, repeating over and over that when he removed his hands the man would see again.

Then he took his hands away. The man raised his eyes to Trammel's face, then slowly turned toward the crowd. For what seemed a long time he stared out toward us, then suddenly he cried aloud, "I can see! Oh, God, I can see!"

He turned, fell to the floor at Trammel's feet, and hugged the All-High's legs, sobbing and crying. The crowd went nuts. There were more amens and hallelujahs than Trammel had got throughout his entire speech. After that remarkable demonstration, all but one of the last four afflicted seemed to show definite improvement.

Finally, the All-High theme came on again and Trammel closed with a few words about the next message soon to be heard in the Truth Room; any who cared for more of the basic truths might attend. This would be followed by confession in the Healing Room.

Then, to the strains of organ music, Trammel left the stage. The lights outside, which had been out for this past hour, now came on again, and Trammel was in plain sight as he walked away, even while skirting the roped-off area before the still incomplete Eternal House. Nobody left his seat until Trammel was inside the Truth Room. Then the exodus began.

Men and women went out arm in arm, faces flushed; teen-age kids elbowed through the crowd in a hurry. In the rush and confusion, I followed several couples to the Truth Room and inside. The light was dim, and it seemed unlikely that I'd be spotted, though it appeared I was the only unaccompanied person here. Soon thirty or forty people were present.

There weren't any chairs or benches, just a carpet over the floor, and everybody sat cross-legged or sprawled on the carpet. I looked around, checking the room against Olive's and Randy's description of it. All the walls were draped with black cloth, but on the right were half a dozen wooden chairs by a door leading to the Healing Room. Up front was a small wooden rostrum, or speaker's stand; Trammel would speak from there.

About five minutes after I sat down on the carpet the basket was passed, and then Trammel came from somewhere in the rear and walked to the speaker's stand. He started to talk through a microphone on the stand, but speaking more quietly this time, and informed us that the message would occupy one hour, after which he would lead us in a Trammelite prayer before the lights came on again. As he spoke, the lights dimmed until darkness was complete. Rheostatically controlled, I thought, probably from Trammel's rostrum.

Trammel continued, saying that tonight he would deliver a sermon on the moral danger of filth in literature. I grinned in the darkness as he quietly launched into an attack on Henry Miller. Henry Miller had to go, that was all there was to it, said Trammel, in much more mellifluous and specific words than those. I grinned again as he began reading, to prove his point that Miller had to go, a passage that I recalled first enjoying in "Tropic of Cancer." Either Trammel was reading from a Braille edition, or he'd memorized it.

I'd heard enough, and moved toward the entrance. Nobody stopped me as I went outside, and that seemed logical, because probably on several occasions people had left the Truth Room before the sermon had ended, having received enough truth to fix them good. I walked alongside the building toward Trammel's house, digging from my coat pocket a small flashlight Hunt had given me.

As I walked close to the building's wall, I could hear Trammel's voice, faint but still hot stuff; then it faded behind me as I reached his house. In half a minute, I'd got the door open and stepped inside. I heard a noise from somewhere ahead of me in the house. Moving quietly, I crossed the room to a closed door, which opened into a darkened hallway; at its end, a thin slice of light spilled from another room, and from inside it came the sounds.

I walked forward slowly, as quietly as I could, hearing a man's voice, but unable to distinguish the words. The door was open about six inches, and when I reached it and leaned against the wall, by looking through the crack I could see into the room.