Charles Jacobs had contracted. His mouth was a pale line. His blue eyes blazed, but they were caught in nets of wrinkles and looked smaller. Shielded, somehow. The cheerful young man who had helped me make caves in Skull Mountain when I was six, the man who had listened with such kindliness when I told him how Con had gone mute… that man now looked like an old-time New England schoolmaster about to birch a recalcitrant pupil.
Then he smiled, and I could at least hope the young guy who had befriended me was still somewhere inside this carny-show gospel shouter. That smile lit up his whole face. The crowd applauded. Partly out of relief, I think. He raised his hands, then lowered them with the palms down. “Sit, brothers and sisters. Sit, boys and girls. Let us take fellowship, one with the other.”
They sat in a great rustling swoosh. The tent grew quiet. Every eye was upon him.
“I bring you good news that you have heard before: God loves you. Yes, every one of you. Those who’ve lived upright lives and those who are neck-deep in sin. He so loved you that he gave His only begotten son—John three: sixteen. On the eve of his crucifixion, His son prayed that you should be kept from evil—John seventeen: fifteen. When God corrects, when He gives us burdens and afflictions, he does so in love—Acts seventeen: eleven. And can he not lift those burdens and afflictions in that same spirit of love?”
“Yes, praise God!” came an exultant shout from Wheelchair Row.
“I stand before you, a wanderer on the face of America, and a vessel of God’s love. Will you accept me, as I accept you?”
They shouted they would. Sweat was rolling down my face, and Hugh’s, and the faces of those on either side of us, but Jacobs’s face was dry and shining, although the spotlight he stood in had to make the air around him even hotter. Add to that the black coat.
“Once I was married, and had a little boy,” he said. “There was a terrible accident, and they drowned.”
It was like a splash of cold water in my face. Here was a lie when there was no reason to lie, at least none that I could see.
The audience murmured—almost moaned. Many of the women were crying, and a few of the men, as well.
“I turned my face from God then, and cursed Him in my heart. I wandered in the wilderness. Oh, it was New York, and Chicago, and Tulsa, and Joplin, and Dallas, and Tijuana; it was Portland Maine and Portland Oregon, but it was all the same, all the wilderness. I wandered from God, but I never wandered from the memory of my wife and my little boy. I put off the teachings of Jesus, but I never put off this.”
He raised his left hand, displaying a gold band that seemed too wide and thick to be an ordinary wedding ring.
“I was tempted by women—of course I was, I’m a man, and Potiphar’s wife is always among us—but I stayed true.”
“Praise God!” a woman shouted. One who probably thought she’d know a Potiphar’s wife if she ever saw that hotbox harlot in matron’s clothing.
“And then one day, after refusing such a temptation that was unusually severe… unusually seductive… I had a revelation from God even as did Saul, on the road to Damascus.”
“God’s word!” a man shouted, lifting his hands heavenward (top-of-the-tentward, at least).
“God told me I had work, and that my work would be to lift the burdens and afflictions of others. He came to me in a dream and told me to put on another ring, one that would signify my marriage to the teachings of God through His Holy Word and the teachings of His son, Jesus Christ. I was in Phoenix then, working in a godless carnival show, and God told me to walk into the desert without food and water, like any Old Testament pilgrim on the face of the land. He told me that in the wilderness I would find the ring of my second and final marriage. He told me if I remained true to that marriage, I would do great good, and be reunited with my wife and son in heaven, and our true marriage would be re-consecrated by His holy throne, and in His holy light.”
There were more cries and ejaculations. A woman in a trim business suit, tan hose, and stylish low heels fell into the aisle and began to testify in a language that seemed solely comprised of vowels. The man with her—husband or boyfriend—knelt beside her, pillowing her head with his hands, smiling tenderly, urging her on.
“He doesn’t believe a word of it,” I said. I was astounded. “Every word is a lie. They must see that.”
But they didn’t, and Hugh didn’t hear me. He was staring, transfixed. The tent was a tumult of gladness, Jacobs’s voice rising above it, pounding through the hosannas by the grace of electricity (and a cordless mike).
“All day I walked. I found food someone had left in a trashbin at a rest area, and ate it. I found half a bottle of Co’cola beside the trail, and drank it. Then God told me to leave the path, and although it was coming on to dark by then, and better trailhands than me have died in that desert, I did as he said.”
Must have been all the way out in the suburbs by then, I thought. Maybe all the way to North Scottsdale, where the rich folks live.
“The night was dark with clouds, not a star to be seen. But just after midnight, those clouds parted and a ray of moonlight shone down on a pile of rocks. I went to them, and beneath it, I found… this.”
He held up his right hand. On the third finger was another thick gold band. The audience burst into applause and hallelujahs. I kept trying to make sense of it, and kept coming up short. Here were people who routinely used their computers to stay in touch with their friends and get the news of the day, people who took weather satellites and lung transplants for granted, people who expected to live lives thirty and forty years longer than those of their great-grandparents. Here they were, falling for a story that made Santa and the Tooth Fairy look like gritty realism. He was feeding them shit and they were loving it. I had the dismaying idea that he was loving it, too, and that was worse. This was not the man I’d known in Harlow, or the one who had taken me in that night in Tulsa. Although when I thought of how he had treated Cathy Morse’s bewildered and brokenhearted farmer father, I had to admit this man had been on the way even then.
I don’t know if he hates these people, I thought, but he holds them in contempt.
Or maybe not. Maybe he just didn’t care. Except for what was in the collection basket at the end of the show, that was.
Meanwhile, he was continuing his testimony. The band had begun to play as he spoke, whipping the crowd up even further. The Gospel Robins were swaying and clapping, and the audience joined in.
Jacobs talked about his first hesitant healings with the rings of his two marriages—the secular and the sacred. About his realization that God wanted him to bring His message of love and healing to a wider audience. His repeated declarations—kneebound and agonized—that he wasn’t worthy. God replying that He never would have endowed him with the rings if that were true. Jacobs made it sound as if he and God had had long conversations about these matters in some celestial smoking room, perhaps puffing pipes and looking out at the rolling hills of heaven.
I hated the way he looked now—that narrow schoolmaster’s face and the blue glare of his eyes. I hated the black coat, too. Carnies call that kind of coat a gag-jacket. I had learned as much working Jacobs’s Portraits in Lightning gaff at Bell’s Amusement Park.
“Join me in prayer, won’t you?” Jacobs asked, and fell to his knees with what looked like a brief squint of pain. Rheumatism? Arthritis? Pastor Danny, heal thyself, I thought.