The high-soaring birds were not eagles, but common brown turkey vultures. The cameraman was under strict instructions to avoid close-ups.
Camera number two panned to the audiencestarchy, contented, attentive faces, except for one man in the front row, who was not applauding. He wore an ill-fitting sharkskin suit, a frayed straw hat, and black sunglasses. He did not look like a happy Christian soldier; more like Charles Manson on steroids. Camera two did not linger on his face for long.
Charlie Weeb didn't call on him for twenty minutes. By that time the audience throbbed in a damp and weepy frenzy. As Weeb had predicted, fat women were fainting left and right. Grown men were bawling like babies.
At a nod from Reverend Weeb, two young deacons in dove-white suits led the blind man to the stage.
"You poor wretched sinner," Weeb said. "What is your name?"
"Jeremiah Skink."
"Ah, Jeremiah!"
The audience roared.
"Jeremiah, do you believe in miracles?"
"Yes, Brother Weeb," Skink said. "Yes, I do."
"Do you believe the Lord is here at Lunker Lakes today?"
"I believe he's here with you," Skink said, reciting the lines, which had been cut drastically due to problems at rehearsal.
"And, Jeremiah, do you believe he watches over his children?"
"He loves us all," Skink said.
"You have been blind, lo, for how long?"
"Lo, for quite a while," Skink said. "And the doctors have given up on you?"
"Totally, Reverend Weeb."
"And you've even given up on yourself, haven't you, brother?"
"Amen," Skink said, as a Minicam zoomed in on the sunglasses. He was mad at himself for caving in about the straw hat and sharkskin suit.
Reverend Weeb dabbed his forehead with a kerchief and rested a pudgy pink hand on Skink's shoulder.
"Jeremiah," he said momentously, "on this glorious tropical day that God has given us, on a day when Christian sportsmen are reaping fortunes from these pristine waters behind us, on such a day it is God's wish that you should see again. You should see the glory of his sunshine and his sky and the breathtaking natural beauty of his modestly priced family town-home community. Would you like to see that, Jeremiah? Would you like to see again?"
"You bet your ass," Skink said, deviating slightly from the script.
Reverend Weeb's eyebrows jumped, but he didn't lose tempo. "Jeremiah," he went on, "I'm going to ask these good Christian people who are witnessing with us today at Lunker Lakes to join hands with one another. And all of you at home, put down your Bibles and join hands in your living room. And I myself will take your hands, Jeremiah, and together we will beseech Almighty Jesus to bless you with the gift of sight."
"Amen," Skink said.
"Amen!" echoed the crowd.
"Make this sinner see!" Reverend Weeb cried to the heavens.
"See!" the crowd shouted. "See! See!"
Skink was getting into the act, in spite of himself. "See me, feel me!" he hollered.
"See him, feel him!" the audience responded. A strange new verse, but it had a pleasing cadence.
Hastily Reverend Weeb steered the prayer chant back to more conventional exhortations. "God, save this wretched sinner!"
"Save him!" echoed the crowd.
Like a turtle suddenly caught on the highway, Reverend Weeb retracted his neck, drew in his extremities, and blinked his eyes. The trance lasted a full minute before he snapped out. Raising his arms above his head, he declared: "The time is nigh. Jesus is coming to our living room!"
The audience waited rapturously. The Minicam was so close you could have counted the pores on Charlie Weeb's nose.
"Jeremiah?" he said. "Repeat after me: 'Jesus, let me see your face.'"
Skink repeated it.
"And, 'Jesus, let me see the sunshine.' "
"Jesus, let me see the sunshine."
"And, 'Jesus, let me see the pure Christian glory of your newest creation, Lunker Lakes.'"
"Ditto," Skink said. Now came the fun part.
"The Lord has spoken," Weeb declared. "Jeremiah, my dear Christian brother, remove thy Wayfarers!"
Skink took off the sunglasses and tucked them in the top pocket of the suit. A ripple of shock passed through the audience. Skink had not allowed the makeup girls near his face. The Minicams backed off fast.
Averting his eyes, Reverend Weeb bellowed: "Jeremiah, are you truly healed?"
"Oh yes, Brother Weeb."
"And what is it you see?"
"A great man in a raspberry suit."
The audience applauded. Many shouted febrile praises to the heavens.
Beaming modestly, Reverend Weeb pressed on: "And, Jeremiah, above my head there is a joyous signa sign invisible to your eyes only a few short moments ago. Tell us what it says."
This was Skink's big cue, the lead-in to the live tournament coverage. Since it was assumed he would still be mostly blind after the healing, Skink had been asked to memorize the banner and pretend to be reading it on the air. The banner said: "Lunker Lakes Presents the Dickie Lockhart Memorial Bass Blasters Classic."
But those were not the words that Skink intended to say into the microphone.
Charlie Weeb waited three long beats. "Jeremiah?"
Skink raised his eyes to the banner.
"Jeremiah, please," Weeb said, "what does the sign say?"
"It says: 'Squeeze My Lemon, Baby.' "
A hot prickly silence fell over the stage. Terror filled the face of the Reverend Charles Weeb. His mouth hung open and his gleaming bonded caps clacked vigorously, but no spiritual words issued forth.
The big blind man with the pulpy face began to weep.
"Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Brother Weeb. Thanks for everything."
With that, Skink turned to face camera one.
And winked.
And when he winked, the amber glass owl eye popped from the hole in his head and bounced on the stage with the sharp crack of a marble. They heard it all the way in the back row.
"Oh, I can see again, Brother Weeb," the formerly blind man cried. "Come, let me embrace you as the Lord embraced me."
With simian arms Skink reached out and seized the Minicam and pulled it to his face.
"Squeeze my lemon, baby!" he moaned, mashing his lips to the lens.
In the crowd, thirteen women fainted heavily out of their folding chairs.
This time it was for real.
"Want a beer?" Lanie asked.
"No," said Dennis Gault.
"A Perrier?" Lanie dug into the ice chest.
"Quiet," her brother said.
He had been casting at the brushpile for a long time without a nibble. He had tried every gizmo in the tacklebox, plus a few experimental hybrids, but returned to the Double Whammy out of stubbornness. It had been Dickie Lockhart's secret lure, everybody knew that, so Dennis Gault was dying to win the tournament with it. Flaunt it. Rub it in. Show the cracker bastards that their king was really dead.
Gault knew he was in the right spot, for the sonic depth-finder provided a detailed topography of the canal bottom. The brushpile came across as a ragged black spike on an otherwise featureless chart; an elliptical red blip shone beneath it.
That was the fish.
From the size of the blip, Dennis Gault could tell the bass was very large.
It did not stay in one place, but moved slowly around the fringes of the submerged crates. Gault aimed his casts accordingly.
"Why won't the damn thing eat?" Lanie asked.
"I don't know," Gault said, "but I wish you'd be quiet."
Lanie made a face and went back to her magazines. She wanted her brother to win the tournament as much as he did, but she didn't fully understand why he took it so seriouslyespecially since he didn't need the money. At least Bobby Clinch had had good reasons to get tense over fishing tournaments; he was trying to keep groceries on Clarisse's table and gas in Lanie's Corvette.
She spun in the pedestal seat so the sun was at her back, and flipped to an article on bulimia.
Thirteen feet beneath the bass boat, in a tea-colored void, the great fish sulked restively. A primitive alarm had gone off somewhere in its central nervous system; a survival warning, powerful but unse-lective. The great fish could not know what triggered the inner responseacute oxygen depletion, brought about by toxins in the waterbut she reacted as all largemouth bass do when sensing a change in the atmosphere.