A thousand recruits? Father McConnell tried to picture a cleric who could draw a crowd like that from the brawling, exuberant young soldiers at the base. Whoever this Reverend Artemis was, he had to have the charisma of Moses.
"Zombies," Grimes repeated, pulling McConnell out of his reverie. "Well, seeing as there's no service, Fd like to get back home. The wife's cooking a pot roast." He winked.
"Of course, Sergeant Grimes," McConnell said. "And I'm sorry about the service."
"Don't make no difference. I'll be back next week. That's my deal. Even just you and me, maybe we can play gin."
"Thank you. Thank you very much for telling me about . . . everything."
"Don't mention it." The old soldier sauntered up the aisle. "Sergeant?" "Yes, sir."
"Do you think you could bring along a couple of friends next week?" he asked timidly.
"I'll try, but it won't be easy. Most of these zombies would sooner have their legs shot off than miss Reverend Artemis. And that goes for some of the officers, too. They're all in on it. Goddamndest thing I ever seen."
Father McConnell stood still as the soldier's footfalls receded and disappeared behind the closing
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door. He felt very lonely in the chapel, his chapel, which was once so full of promise.
His mind wandered back to his first commission, as chaplain to a commando unit in Vietnam. He had been scared then, scared from the beginning. When the attacks came thundering out of nowhere and he watched his men being blown to pieces before his eyes, when he'd had to take an M-16 into his own hands and murder a Cong foot soldier to save one of his own men, he'd regretted enlisting, with all his
heart.
After that incident, when he discovered for the first time that he was capable of killing another human being, he had wanted to die. He thought of his friends from the seminary, gathered around rock concerts, protesting the war in the safety of the United States, and he wished himself among them, smiling and talking peace with middle class college students. What was he doing in the middle of the jungle, learning how to murder?
It was then that the shell exploded and Father McConnell watched an 18-year-old boy from Mississippi dissolve into flying fragments next to him like a bursting balloon.
The damage from the attack was vast. Twelve men dead, 15 wounded. Most of the wounds were too serious to treat with the unit's exhausted first aid kits. Two of the 15 died minutes after the attack subsided. And in the groaning, bloody sore of a makeshift hospital where the sickly sweet smell of death hung in the air like smoke, Father McConnell realized that he was the only comfort on earth that his men had, and the thought made him boil with rage and hate. He hated the protestors back home in their warm apartments, talking politico over dinner
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of duckling. He hated the war with its senseless horror day after unrelenting day. He hated the seminary that taught him about communion and confession and absolution and never told him that one August morning an 18-year-old boy was going to blow up in his face.
Father McConnell cried, and he cradled the head of a soldier who had just lost both legs and would probably never leave that stinking, death-sweating jungle, and the soldier cried, too.
Then he prayed. He prayed through the night as he worked feverishly to patch up the holes and cuts on the bodies of his men. He prayed the next day as he dug the graves where his dead would be buried. He prayed as he crawled with the survivors, dragging the man who now had no legs through the jungle marshes..He prayed loud, so that all his men would hear him; and he prayed often, because that was all they had.
And when the war was over, the man who had no legs miraculously was still alive. He told Father McConnell that the priest had saved his life.
And then Father Malcolm McConnell understood why he had joined the army.
His thoughts returned to the empty chapel. This was going to be where he made his home, serving the soldiers who served their country. But the soldiers didn't need him now, it seemed.
Maybe he just didn't have it anymore. The recruits weren't denying God. They were simply ignoring Father Malcolm McConnell, which was certainly their prerogative, especially since this Reverend Artemis was doing the job of ten Father McConnells.
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He tried to fight the feelings of envy that rose in his throat as he left the chapel. He tried to maintain a cheerful dignity in the mess hall as he ate his dinner alone, while the soldiers at the adjoining tables extolled the virtues of Father Artemis. He tried to tell himself that God's will was sometimes difficult to understand, as he sat on the grassy hill at sunset, watching an army of young soldiers march past him toward the gates leading from the base.
They were going to Father Artemis.
With blinding clarity, Father McConnell knew what he must do. He would go to Father Artemis, too.
In one swift motion, McConnell was on his feet and marching with the recruits through the gates. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, he thought. He would find out what made Father Artemis such a sensation with the troops. Oh, the man was undoubtedly more talented a speaker than McConnell was, but just watching Father Artemis in action might help to bring at least a few recruits back to the little army chapel.
"Hey!" a freckle-faced young man called. "It's
McConnell!"
"Glad you got the spirit, McConnell," another young recruit said, rumpling the priest's hair like a puppy dog's.
"Father McConnell," he corrected.
"Don't worry, McConnell. Artemis is all-loving. Even heretics like you he will take into his heart."
"Reverend Artemis," he corrected again, but no one seemed to hear him.
The services were being held in a huge striped 37
circus tent bearing the words praise artemis in five-foot-high block letters. The tent was set up in a remote spot in the desert.
The congregation that waited for Father Artemis was packed to bursting inside the hot, airless tent. There were no seats inside, and the stifling desert heat, combined with the sweat of more than a thousand bodies, very nearly caused Father McConnell to pass out. He would have sunk to the floor, had there been room. As it was, he bobbed and weaved upright, supported by the crush of the surrounding congregation.
From across the massive tent someone shouted, "Praise Artemis!" and a thousand voices took up the chant.
"Praise Artemis!" they called, clapping their hands in rhythm. "Praise Artemis!" they screamed, stomping their feet. "Praise Artemis!" they cheered, their bodies convulsing crazily, their eyes rolling in ecstasy.
"This can't be true," Father McConnell whispered as the mob whipped themselves into a frenzy.
The cheering was interrupted by shrieks and applause, which grew and sweUed throughout the tent as a man and woman appeared at the side entrance. The crowd parted as the two of them climbed onto a platform set up in the front beneath a "Praise Artemis" sign painted in pink Day-Glo letters.
The man was the strangest looking pastor Father McConnell had ever seen. He sported shoulder-length blond hair, the ends of which curled over the shoulder of a snow-white toga trimmed in rhine-stones. In his right hand he carried a sparkling trident. In his left he carried a white neon lightning
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bolt. He looked like a football player on his way to the Beaux Arts ball.
He raised his implements into the air as a sign that the services were about to begin. The crowd went wild. Smiling broadly, he handed the trident and the lightning bolt to the woman, who was similarly attired in diaphanous white gauze, which silhouetted her curvaceous body in awesome detail. The woman knelt to receive the props, exposing a scandalous portion of her ample bosom.
"Good Lord," Father McConnell said in spite of himself.
Reverend Artemis posed like a statue as the roar of the crowd subsided. The woman blew Dinah Shore kisses to the troops.