Wayne's smile made his face look like a skull. "Just around. I went for a long walk. The music was too loud."
"You meet any of those pretty girls?" Helen asked.
"No. Not a one."
"Great party, huh?" Terry started the engine. "Listen, Wayne. Since I'm on a scholarship, you . . . uh . . . won't tell your dad about this, will you? I mean, I didn't smoke or drink."
"No, I won't tell."
"Good." Terry winked at Helen. "It'll be our secret, right?"
"Right," Wayne said. "Our secret."
32
It was after eleven o'clock, and Wayne was way late getting home. Jimmy Jed Falconer, in his robe and slippers, stood on the front porch in the cool night air and looked out toward the highway.
He'd slipped out of bed without waking Cammy, because he didn't want her to be worried. His belly bulged the knot at the front of his robe, but still his stomach growled for food. Where could the boy be at this time of night? he wondered. He stood on the porch for a few minutes longer, then went back through the large, rambling house to the kitchen.
He switched on the lights, opened the refrigerator, and brought out a piece of blueberry pie Esther the cook had baked just that afternoon. Pouring himself a cold glass of milk, he sat down for a late-night snack.
The summer was almost over. And what a glorious summer it had been, too! The Crusade had held tent revivals throughout Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—hitting the larger towns and the cities—and next year would be ready for expansion into Texas and Arkansas. An ailing Fayette radio station had been purchased, as well as a South Carolina publishing company, and the first issue of Forward, the Crusade's magazine, would be out in October. Wayne had touched and healed a few thousand people over the course of the summer: the boy was a masterful orator, and could hold that stage like he'd been born on it. When Wayne had finished the healing segment of the program, the offering plates came back filled to the brim. Wayne was a good boy, and he was as smart as a whip; but he had a stubborn streak in him, too, and he persisted in going out in the airfield where his Beechcraft Bonanza was hangared and flying without a co-pilot, getting up m the sky and doing all kinds of crazy loops and rolls. That sort of thing scared Falconer to death: what if the plane should crash? Wayne was a good pilot, but he took a lot of risks, and he seemed to enjoy the danger.
Falconer gulped down the milk and chewed on a bite of pie. Yessir! It had been a glorious summer!
Suddenly he realized his left arm was tingling. He shook the hand, thinking it had somehow fallen asleep. It was very hot here in the kitchen, he noticed; he'd begun sweating.
Do you know what you're doing, son?
Falconer stopped with another piece of pie right at his mouth. He'd thought about the night in May many times, and the question the Hawthorne witch-woman had posed to Wayne. That question had surfaced in his mind as he'd watched the pale and hopeful faces of the sick and infirm passing by in the Healing Line, reaching up with trembling hands toward Wayne. Suddenly, the blueberry pie tasted like ashes. He put the fork down on his plate, and touched his chest where a quick needle-jab of pain had pierced. Now it had passed. The pain was gone. Good.
But his mind was wandering in dangerous territory. What if— what if—the witch-woman was right? And he'd known it all along, that Wayne's internal battery was getting weaker and weaker, and that was why he never dared ask Wayne to heal his diseased heart. And what if Wayne knew it, too, and was continuing to play the part because . . . because it was all he'd ever been taught to do.
No! Falconer thought. Wayne healed Toby, didn't he? And thousands of letters came in from people who said they were healed by Wayne's touch and presence!
He recalled a letter from long ago, sent to the Crusade office a week or so after the tent revival in Hawthorne. It had been from a woman named Posey, and Falconer had thrown it away as soon as he'd read it:
Dear Rev. Falconer, we just want to tell you that our son Jimmie has been took by Jesus. Your boy healed him at the revival in Hawthorne, but Jesus must have a purpose for our Jimmie in Heaven. I have paid my sin for selling my baby to Mr. Tillman. May the Lord be with you, and all of your teachings. Sincerely, Laura Posey.
Falconer had made sure Wayne would never see that letter, nor the few dozen letters similar to it that the Crusade had gotten. No, it was better that the boy never, never doubt himself.
Rising unsteadily from the kitchen table, Falconer went to the den and sat down in his easy chair. The framed Falconer Crusade poster, with him looking much younger and braver and stronger, was spotlit by a ceiling light.
Pain speared his chest. He wanted to get up now, and go upstairs to bed, but he couldn't make his body respond. Maybe he needed to take some Tums, that was all. His mind was tormented with the thought of Ramona Creekmore looking at his son and knowing it was all a lie; she had the eyes of Satan, and that boy of hers was walking Death, and it wasn't until he'd met them that his heart had begun to get worse.
Do you know what you're doing, son?
YES HE KNOWS! Falconer raged. HE KNOWS, YOU SATAN-SPAWN BITCH! When Wayne got home, Falconer would tell the boy how they would run the Creekmores out of Hawthorne, drive them off like dogs, far away to where their wicked influence couldn't seep back into the Falconer Crusade. Pain ran up and down his body, lancing across his ribs. "Cammy!" he moaned. "Cammy!"
Pluck them out! he thought. PLUCK THEM OUT!
"CAMMY!"
His hands curled around the armrests, the knuckles whitening. And then the pain struck him full-force, and his heart began to twist and writhe in his chest. His head rocked back, his face turning a deep reddish blue.
From the doorway, Cammy screamed. She was shocked, couldn't move.
"Heart ..." Falconer said in a hoarse, agonized voice. "Call . . . somebody. . . ."
She forced her legs to move, and raced for the telephone; she heard her husband moan for Wayne, and then as if from an awful fever dream he cried—or Cammy thought she heard—"Creekmore . . . pluck them out . . . oh, God, pluck them out. ..."
33
Dear Mom and Dad,
Hello, I hope everything is all right and you're doing fine. I'm writing this letter from Dothan, where the carnival is set up at the fairgrounds. We'll be here until the first of September, and then we go to Montgomery for a week. So far business has been good, Dr. Mirakle says, and he thinks we'll do real good when we get to Birmingham the first week in October. I hope all is well with both of you.
Dad, how are you feeling? I hope your reading is still getting better. I had a dream about you a couple of nights ago. We were walking to town on the highway, just like we used to do, and everybody waved and said hello to us. It must have been springtime in my dream, because there were new buds in the trees and the sky was the soft blue of April, before the heat sets in. Anyways, we were walking just to get out and see the sights, and you were as fit as a new fiddle. It was good to hear you laugh so much, even if it was just in a dream. Maybe that means you'll get better soon, do you think?
Mom, if you're reading this letter aloud to Dad you should skip this next part. Just keep it to yourself. About two weeks ago a new ride called the Octopus joined the carnival. I found out the man who runs the Octopus is named Buck Edgers, and he's been traveling around with it for the better part of four years. A couple of the roustabouts told me there've been accidents on the Octopus. A little girl and her father died when one of the gondolas…that's the part you ride in—broke loose. Mr. Edgers took the Octopus down to Florida for a while, and a teen-age boy fell out of that same gondola when the ride was moving. I don't know if he died or not, but another roustabout told me a man had a heart attack on the Octopus two years ago, in Huntsville. Mr. Edgers changes his name when he applies for a permit from the safety inspectors, I hear, but it seems the inspectors always pass the Octopus because they can never find anything wrong with it. Mr. Edgers is always working on something or another, and I hear his hammer banging late at night when everyone else is asleep. It seems he can hardly stand to leave it alone, not even for a whole night. And when you ask him what he's working on, or how he got the Octopus in the first place, his eyes just cut you dead.