Dead-Bang (5 page)

“Why did you make that funny noise?” I asked Regina.

“What noise?”

“I don't think I could describe it. And I certainly couldn't do it for you—skip it. I mean, you seemed so shook—startled.”

“Well.…”

“Uh-huh. It was my Adam's apple, wasn't it?”

“Your
what?
”

“My—skip it. You'd better tell me.”

“Well, you said that strange thing.”

“
I? I
said the strange thing?
You're
the one—”

“I was standing here listening to our beloved Pastor, and waiting to receive the love offerings, when you tapped me on the shoulder.”

So, love offerings. She was going to pass the plate, then. No, the basket. The basket she was holding in her two hands. I hadn't noticed it. Usually I notice things like that. It was big enough to hold a bushel of potatoes, too. It was a widely woven cane basket, I noted, and it occurred to me—I don't know why, it just occurred to me—that unless there were plenty of bills in the bottom of the basket, any pieces of silver dropped in would scoot right through those big holes and clink on the floor.

“So that's what you do, you take up the collec—the love offerings, hmm?”

“Yes. The other Sentry—” she glanced across the church to the other similarly clad person there—“and I always accept offerings right after the Chorale.”

Chorale? I wasn't sure what that was, but I wasn't going to expose my ignorance, not to this beauty. The way she said it, the word sounded capitalized, like Important. Maybe she did a dance. I hoped she did a dance. But probably that wasn't it. Churches have a long way to go to get back to those good old days.

“Nobody ever tapped me before,” she went on, “so I was already a little bit surprised. And then you said that strange thing.”

“I thought we already settled—”

“It sounded like the first part was, ‘Pardon me.' But then there was … oh, something like ‘Sororamumammimommis'—I don't remember.”

“I don't either. All I said was, ‘I beg your pardon, sir or ma'a—skip it. Well, if that was all, then I don't feel so ba—”

“The real shock was when I turned around and
saw
you. You'll never believe what I thought.”

“Sure I will.”

“I had the insane impression you were a great huge bird.”

“You're right. I don't believe it. You're pulling my leg, aren't you?”

“I don't know
what
I thought, all I know is there was all this yellow around, blinding yellow, it was all I could see, so just in a flash, like, I thought it must be a great huge bird, or a bunch of bananas—”

“This has gone far enough.”

“—and then you started cursing.”

“Oh, come off it.”

“You did, I heard you. You took the Lord's name in vain!”

“You're pulling my leg.”

“You did, you did!”

She was getting shook again. I slapped a hand against my thigh. “Sweet Je … Ah, Miss Winsome, Regina. You may be partly right. Just in case I did, accidentally maybe, sort of in funsies, not meaning any
harm
, take the Lord's name in vain, as you put it, well, I like to think He'd be big enough to overlook it. How about that? Makes sense, huh? Right?”

A great voice boomed out, from up above me and over my left shoulder, and I don't mind telling you I got a terrible chill.

“YOU WILL TURN TO …”

What?
I thought.
Turn to what?
—
Salt? Sodom and Gomorrah? What? A pillar? A pillar of what?

“…”

Come on. I can take it. Just don't play with me. That's inhuman!

“EIGHTY-NINE.”

Eighty-nine? Eighty-nine? Eighty-nine what? You're pulling my leg, aren't you? Look, damnit
—

“AND AFTER THAT IT WOULD BE MOST APPROPRIATE, I THINK, ON THIS EVENING, THE FOURTEENTH OF AUGUST—”

“Lemming,” I said aloud. “Lemming.”

“What?” Regina asked me curiously.

“Lemming. Just old Festus. See, didn't I tell you—”

“—TO CONCLUDE BY SINGING NINETY-EIGHT,” Pastor Lemming concluded.

“Regina,” I said, “something just reminded me, I do indeed have work to do, serious work, in fact, that's why I came up and tapped you, my name is Sheldon Scott, and it is of the utmost importance that I speak, as soon as possible, with Pastor Lemming, and because I wasn't certain he'd talk to me, I thought perhaps you could sort of act as an intermediary, get him to agree to see me—”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course I'm all right. Why do you ask?”

“You look yellow.”

“It's just the reflection. I'm serious about talking to Pastor Lemming, Regina. Do you think you might get him to come down here and give me a bit of his valuable time?” I looked up and over my left shoulder at him. “If he stays where he is, I don't know how in the world I'd get up to him.”

She pointed toward the heavy gray curtains hanging from ceiling to floor behind the elevated podium where Lemming stood. “There's a little circular staircase back there, behind the draperies. You just walk up and down. It's easy.”

“It's easy when you know how it's
done,”
I said sourly. “Do you think you could help—”

“Of course. I'll be glad to. I'll ask him after the start of the Chorale, but before I accept the offerings, all right?”

“Sure.”

I was just standing there, minding my own business, when suddenly there was one—or, rather, several—of the most excruciatingly horrible sounds I'd ever heard. It was even worse than the last horrible sound I'd heard. Well, almost. This was a thumping and piercing and jangling and wailing and twanging and booming—and loud?

“What's that?”
I cried.

Regina looked at me smiling joyously. Her lips moved. I couldn't hear her. So I made her repeat it and read her lips. They said, “It's the start of the Chorale.”

“No wonder it's capitalized,” I said. “You mean the Chorale is … What
is
it? Where does it come from? How does it happen?”

I figured it out from the movements of her lips and her pointing fingers and finally saw it, way down below Lemming, before those draperies behind which was the little staircase you walk up and down. It was a group of musicians—using the word as loosely as it is possible to use it—banging away and playing on their instruments. They were, allegedly, playing music, amplified more than seemed necessary. It wasn't exactly rock and roll, or anything previously known to mankind. It was more like rack and ruin, or Christians on racks getting ruined by infidel lions. I suppose if I had to give it a name I'd call it Plymouth Rock, but it didn't deserve a name as much as a description, like—well, it was what you might hear if you had magic ears and could listen to twelve guitars, two Salvation Army drums, and four tambourines being burned alive.

So this was the Chorale—or the
start
of the Chorale, as Regina had said. Her lips moved, but I couldn't read them. The music had wrecked my eyes, too. Then I felt her take my hand and start leading me away somewhere. That was O.K. with me. Anywhere, just so we got farther—no, we were getting
nearer
the source of that melodic cataclysm, she was leading me not out and away but nearer the noise, then through ah opening in the draperies into dimness where was the staircase you walk up and down. I knew she must have a reason, but it was difficult to think, the crash and violence of the assault of that sound literally interfered with sparks of thought in the brain, short-circuited synapses, and wrenched neurons from dendrites—

As suddenly as it had begun, the entertainment stopped.

For a very small moment that last interrupted thought going out of my mind met and blended with another coming in. Not only Lemming's preaching—his carrot of the Second Coming and stick of damnation-and-foreverburning, his technique of stretching a warning or revelation until suspense and anxiety were at their peak and then snapping it off like a man breaking twigs, his repetition, repetition, repetition of a word or a phrase—but also that
sound
, that
noise
, that astonishing assault on the senses, could not have been more perfectly designed to disorient the brain, befuddle thought, produce a state of what has been called “disinhibition” in the integrity of the mind. Disinhibition so often followed, if the new idea or morality or instruction is skillfully presented, by an almost instantaneous change of mind or heart, sudden switching of loyalty, change in belief so drastic and sudden as to be designated rebirth—as in that well-known rebirth described reverently as “religious conversion.”

It was the then-embryo but now-full-grown technique used deliberately or unconsciously, and so effectively in the past, by Calvin and Wesley and others equally righteous, by revivalists and torturers and brainwashers, by Hitler and Stalin and fire-and-brimstone preachers. And, it would surely seem, by Festus Lemming. Add communal singing and chanting and clapping of hands, and maybe a little more Plymouth Rock and perhaps holy dancing, and half the flock might fall down in a frenzy.

I pushed that out of my mind and let my thoughts wander—or, rather, forced them to wander—and was able to detect either physically or telepathically the hot
thump-thump-thump
of Regina's pulse at the spot where her hand held mine.

First Dru, now Regina, in many ways as different as day and night, but each with the hot
thump-thump-thump
of a woman's heart stirring the warm Red Sea in everyman, whether or not they willed it, a thing not contained in books or churches or even Bibles, a truth and law of nature and of nature's God that no hope or fear or faith can deny, not while the blood moves and burns. But some, like Festus Lemming, try—and keep on trying—to deny it.

And then, there he was. Festus Lemming in the flesh.

I guess it was flesh.

5

We were at the rear of the church in what was Essentially a large and dimly illumined room with its fourth wall formed by those heavy draperies behind us, and with an enormously high ceiling and another four or five thousand square feet of floor space. Space for future expansion, I supposed; but right now, except for what were probably offices all the way back, it was apparently a kind of pastoral warehouse, jumbled and cluttered.

Regina had led me to a point near that circular staircase she'd mentioned, and I could see the steel treads curving upward above us. Festus Lemming had just descended them and was now stepping toward us. It seemed almost fated that Regina would remove her hand from mine the instant he lamped us, so in the same split second when I found Festus I lost her pulse. It wasn't an equal exchange. It was more as though something had died—and, oddly, at that moment a long-forgotten memory came back to me.

It was a boyhood memory, sharp and so fresh I could feel again that morning's unusual chill. I had rescued, from an ancient but not diabolical cat, a bird too young to fly, warmed it in my palm, and felt the wild beat of its heart for long seconds until, suddenly, it stopped.

Now, why, I wondered, would I think of a dumb thing like that at the very moment when I gazed upon the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor? And why would I be reminded that there are some people alive who, simply by their presence, crush life in others? Maybe it was that horrendous music or Regina's pulse or the unique experience of being in church on a Saturday night. And maybe it was none of those things. All I know for sure is that when I saw Festus Lemming I remembered, and felt again, that long-ago morning's unusual chill.

Regina was saying, “I'm terribly, terribly sorry, beloved Pastor, that I was so late this evening. I was so tired, and took a nap and … overslept. But I've never missed the opening hymn before. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

I shook my head. Could I have heard what I thought I'd heard? Probably not.

“I trust, Miss Winsome,” Lemming said coldly, “you will not oversleep again
tomorrow
night.”

He gave “tomorrow” a marvelous emphasis, making of it a thing apart, illumined by Roman candles and rockets and bombs bursting in air. Ah, yes, tomorrow—tomorrow was to be
the
night of nights.

On he went, each word a dry leaf blown by wintry winds, “The Lord's work … will not wait … on weakness and infirmity. If the cross of duty is too burdensome … lay it down—yes!—lay it down. If this happens again, Miss Winsome … there will be no room for you here.
There will be no room.”

I had wandered unaware into Funland at Disneychurch. They'd heard I was coming and half-baked a kook: they were putting me on. But, no, I saw Regina's smooth cheek pale. It became whiter, and I heard her suck in her breath once again with that odd little
wheeuk
, but I heard it without even slight amusement this time.

“I'm
terribly
sorry, beloved Pastor. Please—”

“Have you no work to do for the Lord, Miss Winsome?”

She glanced quickly, nervously at me. There was something almost like terror in her eyes. It was undoubtedly an emotion close to terror, for I assumed she had just been threatened with the Second Coming version of excommunication. If so, and if she did not humble herself sufficiently to avert the horrible fate, it would mean she could no longer talk to God; and, even worse, that God could no longer talk to her either. No wonder she was terrified.

But right then Regina won me. She got all the good marks I can give. Because she started to turn, then stopped. And did what she'd told me she would do.

“Beloved Pastor … this is Mr. Scott, Sheldon Scott.” Her voice was small and soft. “I said I would ask you if—you would give him a few, a minute or two of your time.” She swallowed. “He said it was very, extremely urgent.”