‘Why are you so afraid?’ Donnell asked the crowd. ‘It’s not just my eyes. That’s not what drives you to seek salvation.’ He spotted a portly, sport-jacketed man trying to push through to the entrance. ‘You!’ he called, pointing, and knew the substance of the man’s life as if it had rushed up his finger: pompous, gluttonous, every dependency founded on fear and concealing a diseased sexuality, a compendium of voyeurism and the desire to inflict pain. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said derisively, the way a murderer might taunt his victim, and was amazed to see the man swallow and inch toward the stage, his fear lessening. ‘Gome closer,’ said Donnell. ‘Tonight, verily, you will bear miraculous witness.’
He singled out others of the crowd, coaxing them nearer, and as he did, he felt a distance between his voice and his cautious soul, one identical to that he had experienced when he persuaded Jocundra to leave the scene of the murders at Sealey’s. But in this instance the distance was more profound. The element of his consciousness which spoke dominated him totally, and his own fear was swept away by the emotional charge of the words. Disgust, pity and anger met in his mind and pronounced judgement on the crowd, on the culture that had produced it, comparing it unfavorably to a sterner culture existing beneath the flood of his memory like a submerged shoal, unseen, undefined, known only by the divergence of waves around it; but he did not question its reality, rather acted as its spokesman. He could, he thought, tell the crowd anything and they would listen. They were not really listening, they were reacting to the pitch and timbre of his voice, his glowing eyes. Their fear had taken on a lewd, exultant character, as if they had been eagerly awaiting him.
‘Lo,’ he said, spreading his arms in imitation of Papa Salvatino, ‘the Lord God has raised me up from the ramshackle kingdom of the dead and sent me to warn you. Not of Kingdom Come but of Kingdom Overthrown, of Satan’s imminent victory!’
Hesitant, they shuffled forward, some coming halfway along the aisle, soothed by the familiar Biblical cadences, but not yet ready to embrace him fully. The ease with which they could be swayed delighted him; he imagined an army carrying a green-eyed banner through the world, converting millions to his cause.
‘Do you remember the good old days?’ he asked with a wistful air, hobbling along the edge of the stage. ‘Those days that always seem just to have vanished or perhaps never even were. Days when the light was full of roses and lovers, when music played out every window and the kids weren’t into drugs, when Granny baked her bread fresh each morning and the city streets were places of excitement and wonder. Whatever happened to those days?’
They didn’t know but wanted to be told.
‘You began to hear voices,’ he said. ‘You began to have visions, to receive reports, all of which conjured against that peaceful world. Radio and newspapers preaching a gospel of doom, a spell binding you to its truth. And then along came Satan’s Eye Itself. Television.’ He laughed, as at some fatal irony. ‘Don’t you hear the evil hum of the word, the knell of Satan? Television! It’s the ruling character of your lives, like the moon must have been for Indians. An oracle, a companion, a signal of the changing seasons. But rather than divine illumination, each night it spews forth Satan’s imagery. Murders, car crashes, mad policemen, perverted strangers! And you lie there decomposing in its flickering, blue-gray light, absorbing His horrid fantasies.’
He stared over their heads as if he saw a truth they could not see, staring for so long that many followed his gaze.
‘You’ll go home tonight and look at your sets and say, “Why, it’s a harmless entertainment, a blessing when the kids are sick.” But that logic’s Satan’s sales pitch, brothers and sisters. What it really is is the transmission of Armageddon’s pulse, the rumormonger of the war foretold by Scripture, the power cell of Satan’s dream for mankind. Take a closer look. Turn it on, touch the glass and feel the crackle of His force, catch a whiff of His lightning brain. It’s the thing you fear most, the thing which has seduced you, which is lifting you to its jaws while you think it’s preparing to give you a kiss. Know it, brothers and sisters! Or be consumed. And when you truly know it, save yourself. Break the glass, smash the tubes!’
‘Break the glass!’ shouted someone, and another shouted, ‘Break it! Break it!’
‘Break the glass,’ said Donnell softly. ‘Smash the tubes.’ And the crowd, though unfamiliar with the litany, tried to repeat it.
‘Hallelujah!’ said Donnell.
They knew that one and were nearly unanimous in their response. He had them say it again, letting them unite within the sound of the word, and then held out his hands for silence.
‘Break the glass, smash the tubes, and…’ He made them wait, enjoying the expectancy on their faces. ‘And… renew the earth! Oh, brothers and sisters, don’t you remember when you used to walk to the edge of town and into the woods and fields? What’s taken their place?’
They weren’t sure. ‘Evil!’ someone suggested, and Donnell nodded his approval.
‘Right enough, brother. Gas stations and motels and franchise restaurants. Defoliated zones of sameness! Places that have lost their identity and might be anywhere on God’s earth. Why, put a good Christian down in one and he might think he was in Buffalo as like as Albuquerque. But you know where he really is? Those bright little huts tinkling with jingles are the anterooms of Hell-on-earth, an infection of concrete and plastic spreading over the land, reducing everything to the primary colors and simple shapes of Satan’s dream. Arby’s, Big Boy, McDonald’s, Burger King! Those are the new names of the demons, of Beelzebub and Moloch.’ He shook his head, disconsolate. ‘Satan’s nearly won, and he would have already except for one thing. God has a plan for Salt Harvest. A master plan, a divinely inspired plan! Do you want to hear it?’
Yes, indeed. The boldest of them were three-quarters of the way down the aisle, waggling their hands overhead, praising God and begging His guidance.
‘Salt Harvest! Listen to the name. It’s a natural name, an advertising man’s dream of organic purity, a name that bespeaks the bounty of the sea and of God, redolent of Christian virtue and tasty gumbos. How many people live here?’
They argued briefly, settling on a consensus figure of between fifteen and eighteen thousand.
‘And things aren’t going too well, are they? The economy’s depressed, the cannery’s shut down, the kids are moving away. Am I right?’
‘Now bear with me, brothers and sisters. Hear me out, because like every great plan this one’s so simple it might sound foolish until you get used to it. But imagine! Eighteen thousand Christian souls united in a common enterprise, all their resources pooled, digging for every last cent, competing with Satan for the consumer dollar and the souls of the diners. You’ve got everything you need! Cannery, shrimp boats, good men and women, and God on your side. Salt Harvest. Not a town. A chain of franchise restaurants coast to coast. I’m not talking about a dispensary of poisoned meat, a Burger Chef, a Wendy’s, a Sambo’s. No! We’ll stuff them full of Gulf Shrimp and lobster, burgers made from the finest Argentine beef. We’ll outcook and undersell Satan and his minions, drive them into ruin. Instead of pimply, dope-smoking punks, we’ll staff our units with Christian converts, and in no time our logo, the sign of the fish and the cross, will not only be familiar as a symbol of God’s love but of gracious dining and quality cuisine. We’ll snip a page from Satan’s book and have a playland for the kids. They’ll enter through the Pearly Gates, ride Ferris wheels with winged clouds for cars, cavort with actors dressed as cute angels and maybe even the Messiah Himself. A chapel in the rear, ordained ministers on duty twenty-four hours a day. Every unit will shine with a holy beacon winking out the diamond light of Jesus Christ, and soon the golden arches will topple, the giant fried chicken buckets will fill with rainwater and burst, and we’ll bulldoze them under and build the Heavenly City in their place! Oh, there’ve been Congregationalists and Baptists and Methodists, but we’ll have something new. The first truly franchised religion! That’s real salvation, brothers and sisters. Economic and spiritual at the same time. Hallelujah!’