Sylvia comes around the corner of Voegelin and onto Watson and immediately sees where the artists were headed. She’s stopped by a huge crowd that’s taken over the entire street. Traffic can’t pass and a line of cars is starting to form and lean on their horns. The noise of the crowd seems to increase as she starts to wade through it and then there’s an awful squeal, that piercing high-pitched whine of feedback that a radio or amplifier will sometimes make. The crowd flinches in unison as the whine dies and then a rolling, familiar voice shouts, “I’m sorry, people. Very sorry. Is it working, Raymond? Can they hear me?”
She’s half a block away from the heart of the action but she can see the crowd’s center is in front of Herzog’s Erotic Palace, known locally as the Skin Palace, a baroque and expansive X-rated movie house that’s also the oldest theater in Quinsigamond. More an architectural miracle than a building, it’s a five-story Moderne temple and just the sight of it makes all the shoebox mall cineplexes even more heinous.
Sylvia squeezes through bodies until she’s directly opposite Herzog’s. She spots a mailbox and hoists herself up on it in time to see Reverend Garland Boetell being elevated onto the roof of an old white Cadillac that has the words Chariot of Virtue emblazoned on its side in glitter paint. Boetell’s got a microphone of some kind gripped in both his hands and as he blows across its head, the street fills with the sound of a moist wind. The Chariot of Virtue has been pulled up onto the sidewalk and it’s surrounded by what must be the Reverend’s inner core, about a dozen men and women led by the Brazilian teen aide-de-camp Fernando, all of them dressed in what look like heavy robes, kind of like monk’s robes, with cowl hoods hanging down the back and loose, rope-like belts. This crew is walking in slow circles around the car, carrying placards with messages like Whores of Babylon, Your Time Has Come and Save the Children From This Filth and Carnal Sinners Reside Within.
In front of the entrance to Herzog’s is a line of the Palace’s resident muscle, beefy steroid cases all decked out in logo’d spandex jackets and cowboy boots. They’ve formed a well-pumped barricade in front of the door by standing shoulder to shoulder. They’ve got their folded hands clasped in front of their groins, secret-service style. And they’re looking none too happy. It’s clear they’d like to put a quick and definitive stop to this spectacle, but they must have orders from the boss to simply hold the front line until the lawyers decide how to play things.
Boetell seems thrilled by the presence of the bouncers. He’s a pro at this kind of media event and it’s always more effective to rail against human flesh, no matter how restrained, than inanimate brick and mortar.
“Look at them before us,” the Reverend bellows into the microphone, “guarding the gates to hell itself. Boys,” he addresses the bouncers directly, “when you stand before the Almighty on your personal judgment day and the Lord asks you how you spent your days on the earth, what, in the name of mercy, are you going to tell him? What kind of answer will you give to the face of your one and only savior? Will you say, Sweet Jesus, I served in the legion of the antichrist? Will you say, Dear Lord A’mighty, I ushered the misguided into the cushioned seats of damnation? Fall on your knees here and now, sinners, and offer up prayer with Reverend Boetell that we might buy back your immortal souls from the demon.”
But the bouncers aren’t having any of it. They keep their rigid stances behind their bushy mustaches until one guy at the end gives in to the temptation and flashes Boetell a defiant middle finger.
The Reverend wheels to the crowd and barks, “Then we must pray for them, my friends. It is our mission on this rock. Let us now raise our voices so that the strength of the Archangel might descend upon us and we prove worthy to fight the final battle at the time of Millennium. Sing now with me, people. Sing loud and send your voices soaring to heaven that he might bring the rain of fire down upon this bastion of carnal hideousness. That he might smite this wicked temple as he did Sodom and Gomorrah.”
As if on cue the gang in the robes circling the Caddy breaks into “Nearer My God To Thee.” The first few yards of people beyond them join in the singing. But after that the street is clogged with packs of Canalites and furious motorists and they start in with catcalls and heckling. Boetell yells above the voices of his choir, “Your taunting will only make us stronger. You are advised, one and all, that the decent people of Quinsigamond are taking back their city. They will not tolerate abominations such as this one,” a wildly dramatic gesture toward the Skin Palace. “They are linking arms with brethren from the East Coast to the West. The day of the Lord is upon us, heathens. Get thee behind me. The family of God will trample you under its heel.”
It’s on this last line that the egg throwing starts. Boetell catches one right on the jaw. The splatter covers his whole face, but he looks more thrilled than shocked, as if this were the perfect turn of events, the next exact step in a scripted pageant. He makes a show of mopping his face with the sleeve of his white suitcoat, but it’s really just a brush to a single cheek and the bulk of the yolk still shows like a runny scar.
A kid with a mohawk haircut charges the Caddy with a full, open carton of fresh grade-As, hoping to give the Reverend a complete pelting, but one of the singing disciples suddenly drops into a defensive stance, takes his 2 Thessalonians 1:8, 9 placard from his shoulder and starts swinging it like a battle-ax. On his third swing he nails mohawk in the stomach and the kid crumbles to the pavement.
The crowd starts to go crazy, pushing and shoving and screaming. The bouncers look at each other, starting to get edgy, unsure of what to do next. Boetell closes his eyes and turns his head to the heavens. He brings the mike to his lips and yells, “Send us help in our hour of need, Sweet Jesus. Send us a phalanx of reinforcements to battle those who would blaspheme the flesh and defile the soul. On your command let an army of righteous warriors join our holy platoon and war on this lascivious enemy of unbridled lust and perversion.”
And the Reverend gets his wish. A column of marching women breaks out of an alley next to the Palace and, with an almost military precision, starts to move in the direction of the Chariot of Virtue. The crowd seems so stunned by their appearance that it parts like a biblical sea and the unit raises its clenched fists in an up-and-down power salute and comes to a stop at the hood of the Caddy.
Boetell falls to his knees, careful not to dent the roof, and says, “You have rewarded our faith. You have sent the enemies of our enemies to help us beat the writhing beast into submission. Let us say Amen.”
An amen chorus sweeps through the faithful, followed by a lot of Praising the Lord. The new arrivals, however, seem less than enthusiastic about the revival rhetoric. The women are all dressed in black-and-white striped, smock-like tunics and matching pants. They’ve got large blocklike numbers stenciled in black on their backs. It’s like a costume party where everyone decided to show up as old-time prisoners, like inmates in some ancient jailbreak movie. And they’ve all got silver tape over their mouths. One woman steps up onto the Caddy’s bumper, then up to the hood, holds her hands up over her head to get the crowd’s attention, waits a beat, then gives a signal to her people and in unison they all make an exaggerated display of ripping the tape from their faces and hurling it to the ground. The leader then jumps up next to Boetell and grabs the microphone from him.