Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption (8 page)

Then he’d sing with a purely improvised, ecstatic passion over three octaves—of Christ’s suffering on the nails—while Rose would bring it in, and slowly raise, what may well be the first piece of transcribed instrumental music by a black American, a young house nigger known simply as Tall Jim, called “The Beauty of My Salvation.” Tall Jim was a freedman, not a slave, who reputedly could speak three African languages and had learned French and Spanish before mastering English. He was burned alive in front of a hundred white witnesses just below St. Louis in 1845 for the crime of teaching his employer’s daughter how to play their expensive 18
^th
 century harpsichord. He’d composed the piece late at night after the family was asleep and was never able to play it openly. But he was able to transcribe the music and it circulated secretly, eventually becoming an inspiration for the Only Men.

As Rose said so simply, “If this don’t raise hairs, we’re preaching to the dead.” She threw everything she had at that number and would always weep in the final movement, barely able to finish with the gentle onslaught of the last change—and then, pulling herself together, she’d drive the piece home in a fury of musical love. Only then, the littlest, whitest and last of the Only Men would sing the words . . . 
For though I be forsaken—I will never, ever yield—your faith will be rewarded—only faith can be your shield.

Then it was time for the healing to begin.

Call the sufferers to come forward and be exposed to the scrutiny of the assembled. To come forward means they’re already hyped up and in a suggestible state. Never allow them to declare their problem. You’ve got to cold read it or impose upon them the matter to be cured. A sharp take on hands, age, clothing and posture, says a lot. Facial defects, gestures. Maybe a little pepper to bring on a sneeze. “You could be contagious. Let’s pray for us all.”

In the midst of chanting and ranting—stirring music filled with strangers and rivers—a few people rolling in the sawdust or in the aisles, just because that’s what they came to do, it’s not that hard to make a handful of others forget for a moment they’ve lost a limb or have a heart defect. That’s why most of them have come—to forget for a moment. Maybe their sight won’t be restored—but they can be given a vision—
And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it.

Six chosen healings was always the number. “Remember, we’re not doing this for our health,” Poppy would say. “Let ‘em come to the next show.”

Their bold close would always be with someone who had an obviously incurable disability. Cerebral Palsy, mental retardation—an amputee—whatever was the worst the audience could offer and could not under any circumstances be faked. Reverend America would put his hands right on the soft spot—raise up his voice to God and call for the healing miracle. And it always came—because of all that had come before. “Some miracles require more faith to see.”

Six precisely orchestrated theatrical moments with handpicked members of the audience—then bang. Reverend America would clap his hands and bow, and say—
Almighty God, from whom no secrets are hid, we thank thee for thy healing grace. Cleanse now the thoughts of our innermost hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love thee and magnify thy Holy Name through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen
.

Rose would bring up the organ and the young albino minister would shout, “Now who here is ready to be saved—and be Born Again? Do you know how to say Hallelujah?”

“Hallelujah!”

“I can’t hear it!”

“Hallelujah!”

“I can’t hear it!”

“Hallelujah!”

“Jesus, can you hear it?”

“Hallelujah!”

Then the dizzying crush would form, as Reverend America would go forth into the audience, people falling over at the touch of the White Angel—grasping for the hem of his garment. He’d part the sea and cross the river of hands flailing—faces squished into tearful smiles of ecstasy and release—the human sweat smell—the organ reaching the pitch of mania—the word made flesh.

“I’ll tell you, that boy’s got courage,” Casper once heard Poppy say to Rose after a show. “There’s carnival—and then there’s courage. He’s a goddamn wonderworker he is. He could convert the Philippian jailer and Luther crawling up the Roman steps in one night.”

And the good young Reverend wasn’t averse to a little comedy at his own expense. One night in Yazoo City, he repaired an attending minister’s hearing aid and got a good round of applause for saying, “Thank you, Jesus for letting me solve some problems all on my own.” Poppy made him some macaroni and cheese after that one, and said, “Kid, damn it, if you can teach this stuff—God knows I’ve tried. Jolly Bob Rawls would’ve been wet proud of you tonight.”

No other mention was ever made of who Jolly Bob was—Casper assumed he’d been some kind of mentor to Poppy. But for the first time it occurred to him that he hadn’t been the first child/protégé they’d tried.

They kept up their musical standard, performing with the Honey-creepers in Bowling Green and opening for Mahalia Jackson at a moonlight concert in Jackson. As the money and expectations rose, they adopted new theatrical tricks. They employed flash powder for a bit of “startle.” A new track and field starter’s gun was good for making a point. A handkerchief soaked in ether was helpful when it came to forcing a plump matron to “faint for Jesus.” Poppy managed to secure a canister of nitrous oxide and the mood of everyone that evening lifted considerably. Reverend America always kept Wolf Mint in his left pocket, an herb that produces a cool tingling sensation when applied to the skin. In the right pocket, he had Reddy Steady, a preparation made of ground jalapeño chilies and salve for a bit of the burning touch of the Lord.

They introduced a chloroformed rabbit that would appear to wake at the Reverend’s call to the House of Heaven. One night though, near Valdosta, the creature escaped the bus and was mauled by a blue tick hound. They had much more success with a white mouse Poppy procured from a pet shop in Jonesboro. Dubbed Lazarus, the little fellow proved amazingly enduring—and was easily passed from hand to hand with great effect (even Rose couldn’t abide him being thrown in the river when he finally failed to revive—and so he was buried beneath a dogwood tree).

Along the way, Reverend America learned how to deal with occasional hecklers. The family response was always tight and sharp. Any sermonizing would stop cold. Rose would begin popping the organ in a syncopated beat. Poppy would hand clap—and Reverend America would search the crowd for the culprit, stretching out his right arm and pointing when he’d found the source. “Satan takes so many forms today,” he’d say. “Come down here brave Satan. Take the microphone from humble me so that we may all hear you clearly. So that we may recognize you for you who are—and what you will never be—
SAVED
. Or,” Reverend America glared around the room, pausing for effect, “can God save even Satan? Let’s see if we all have enough Heavenly Power here now to call the Devil out. Come down to me Satan for I stand with Jesus beside me. Come down—or I will cast you back to your dark fire.”

As he became more expert in manipulating a crowd, his sermonizing became more dramatic and extreme. He gave people the throne, the elders and the beasts—a war of angels and dragons. From little bib overall burgs like Bear Branch, Thousandsticks and Sipwater—spicing up the local church services, performing in high school gyms or revival tents in dusty fields and sunflower patches, around sawmills and spud farms—they moved onto bigger venues. They worked famous Holy Roller churches, seminaries, creepy tidewater hospitals, old folks homes—NASCAR tracks and minor league baseball parks.

MIRACLE BOY HEALING SERVICE

*Brain tumor – Woman given only days to live by doctors and paralyzed by operations is able to walk and doctors cannot find a trace of the tumor!

*Smashed Leg – Boy in car crash has pin in his leg which leaves it shorter than the other. While praying it suddenly grows!!!!!!!!

COME SEE THE BLIND HAVE THEIR SIGHT RESTORED

FIND YOUR FAITH

CASH DONATIONS TO THIS VITAL MINISTRY WELCOME

So it went, as they rattled through the Bible Belt, from the soybean fields of Iowa all the way south to Brownsville and over to Spartanburg—until some times it seemed to little Mathias that he really did have the healing touch—that he was Reverend America, Jesus meets Uncle Sam.

People, you’re going to see limbs grow back—legs grow back, eyes put back into sockets—it’s going to be a sign of the miracle working power of God. And nobody’s gonna be able to discount it!

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Do you want to be saved here, tonight?

I can’t hear you people—and if I can’t hear you, He won’t hear you. He wants you to cry out to him. He wants you to scream.

He died for your sins and that’s all the scream you can give? He died on the Cross so that you might live forever in Heavenly light if you but follow the path of his devotion. C’mon now, scream for the Lord of Hosts!

Scream for Jesus. Let him know you love him as he wants to show his love for you. He’s aching to accept you, if you accept him. Are you ready to be saved—to be healed—to be made whole in Jesus’ name?

C’mon down here then, whether you have to crawl. If you’re sick, lame, blind, or just lost in the wilderness, find your way down here to me. Because I’m not just Reverend America here on my own with my family. You are my family—and I’m here because Jesus is with me. Jesus loves this great country. He loves hardworking people like you who are weary and stumbling. He wants to save you—tonight and for all time. This is Redemption Night.

Who’s going to let me touch them and say, “Satan, I bind your evil power by the blood of the Lamb. Tonight we loosen the mighty power of the Holy Spirit in this place. I tell you—the rustling’s in the mulberry trees. Little Diddie Tagrow in Birmingham is walking tonight when she couldn’t before. Lorrimer Steele in Natchez isn’t going to die of cancer. He’s going to live forever in the divine peace of Christ’s great blessing.

Come on down now as my beautiful mother sings “Washed in the Blood.” Come down to me so that you may be raised up in glory to Him. Come home to Reverend America.

It was good patter as Poppy said, written one night in Arkadelphia rain—and of course it just got better with each performance, as little orphaned Mathias Gaspenny became ever more Mathias True.

Their profit margin expanded with the sale of Rejuvenation, a pseudo patent medicine they mixed up in the kitchen in Joplin (it was really just an aniseed flavored bit of alcohol mixed with aspirin and Spanish fly, which is derived from a green beetle).

Beyond Rejuvenation sales, money came from straight donations, those buckets passed around—and a special project to help Nana, an Indian girl born with a parasitic head. A confronting forensic photograph blown up to the size of bulletin board spurred on this latter initiative. It was in fact an old carnival gaff that Poppy had harvested and turned into a poster. This was great, but the kicker was always Rejuvenation. Poppy and Rose could never transcend their patent medicine beginnings. Leopards don’t change their spots.

This is also where their “lusty vitality” came into play. Rejuvenation was how an aging couple had given birth to Reverend America, a miracle child of God. For men who couldn’t get it up like they used to and women who were infertile—this was the answer. Poppy knew, in his old carny way that the real truths of life can’t be escaped from, even in a revival tent. They in fact become amplified there. What was all the rolling around and groaning, if not sex finding another outlet?

Although Casper would come to feel both used and deserted by Poppy and Rose, he had to admit that they taught him many things.

Poppy bought him a secondhand bicycle from a black man without teeth in Topine and later taught him how to ride it on a red clay road outside Intercourse, Alabama. “People are suspicious of a boy who can’t ride a bike,” he said.

Although he’d never have much facial hair, Casper appreciated Poppy carefully tutoring him in how to shave with a straight razor. It linked him to a forgotten past.

Even fig-leaf Rose gave him what she could—teaching him how to sing. “You don’t slur the notes—you 
release
 them. You have to learn how to sing as only you can.” He’d think of that many times in his life. Releasing the notes. Singing as only he could.

From them, he learned to appreciate cornbread and chitlins—burgoo and beer cheese. He learned to not hide his light under a bushel and how to read a map—and he spent enough time staring at one of America to hold it clear in his mind even when it had long since blown out a window into a rice field in Stuttgart, Arkansas.

He learned how to think on his feet and what the Prophet Isaiah meant by the strength in sitting still. He learned not to go looking for the left-handed monkey wrench—and he learned that just because you’re a trickster doesn’t mean you can’t be tricked too.

Put not your faith in princes—and never, 
ever
 trust anyone wearing a coonskin cap.

Pulling into Joplin, Casper heard the alarm that rings when the past is near. What had he hoped to find?

The Greyhound had made the 280-mile run from St. Louis in better time than expected, but it was still early in the morning. The delay in Indianapolis had thrown off his scheduling. He’d thought of hiking out to sleep beside Berina’s grave in Ozark Memorial Park Cemetery. He’d spent many nights in graveyards over the years and found them quite peaceful. But more and more people had started getting the same idea and the “bone farms” had become truly scary places now. He also didn’t like the idea of Berina seeing him without a home and short on money again. The last time he’d been with her, when she was healthy, they’d gone on a picnic to Wildcat Glades and then to Route 66 Carousel Park.

“You know what?” she said. “I haven’t let myself eat fried chicken since I lived in Chicago. Today I want to eat fried chicken, and some rocky road ice cream.”

Plan B was an on-site trailer in the KOA Campground, but at this hour he was inclined to just crawl into some bushes in Landreth Park. The bus station is on West 2
^nd
 Street and that wouldn’t be too far to walk, with not many people around. Now actually arriving at his destination, he was at a loss for why he’d come.

He’d been a long time traveling after Joe’s passing. He’d tried to get work on a horse ranch outside Parker, Arizona—and then went looking for Hercules—but found the old brave had died in Phoenix years before. Not enough Medicine, and of course no health insurance. He’d never known the old man’s Indian name—just that he did exquisite sand paintings and said, “What you don’t make or find, you gotta be given.”

So, he started east, visiting places he’d wanted to see since he’d first heard of them. There was trouble one night in Boise, but he’d left the man breathing. He’d been pleased with Glacier National Park, and the Corn Palace in South Dakota. It reminded him of the pictures in the religious primers back in Charleston.

It had been in Minneapolis that he’d met up again with Betsy. She’d been more fun than Boston on St. Patrick’s Day in the old days, but she’d developed MS and walked with a cane now. He couldn’t get her to throw her cane away. Still, she served him a wiener schnitzel and let him have a hot bath. He’d become pretty adept at sneaking into campgrounds and trailer parks for showers when he wasn’t staying in them, but a slow hot bath was a deep luxury.

Rightly or wrongly, she gave him what turned out to be the twisted hope that he might have a son, living in Hartford, and so of course he went. It turned out to be a wild goose chase and the disappointment nearly sent him spinning back into the Lonely Room—as well as almost getting him busted. He only escaped because a chain link fence fell down at the right moment. If the boy she’d named Noel had been his son, he was two years dead and didn’t seem to be missed by many.

From there he’d gone down to New York, wanting to see Times Square again. When he’d worked on the Montrealer, he’d occasionally slip down to the city to play with the whores on Eighth Avenue. He liked coming into Penn Station. Once he’d walked all the way to Battery Park, but mostly he’d gone north for the girls and the lights. He’d treat himself to a Swiss cheese burger and a martini at the Howard Johnson’s in Times Square—or a huge pastrami sandwich from the Carnegie Deli around the corner. One of his work mates from the train, named Jerky had a place in East Harlem where he’d stay.

The Ho-Jo’s was gone—he found the Port Authority had been totally revamped and 42
^nd
 Street was another world. The peep shows had all been cleaned up. It seemed just a raucous hive of tourism now. He didn’t think something like that should be tampered with—Times Square belonged to the world. Which then struck him funny, because back in Reverend America days he’d often railed about the evils of the place—brass idols, false prophets and filthy dreamers of dreams—knowing nothing at all about it except in his imagination—Sodom and Gomorrah turned into ashes. Standing on the corner of 46
^th
 and Broadway watching the shimmering lights and giant faces, it seemed symbolic in a different way now.

That was where and when he’d met Utensil. “We’re all tools of the System,” his signboard read—“but some of us are appliances.”

Short, bald and dressed in a smelly powder blue polyester leisure suit he’d obviously scavenged from a dumpster—he was like so many that Casper remembered from the institutions—yet somehow filled with an unmistakable joy in being. He seemed too full of energy and life for any living room—he needed Times Square.

Amidst the sidewalk portrait painters and caricaturists, Utensil offered an “Emotional Consultancy” service that he claimed would help you “find your inner appliance.” Many of the rubbernecking tourists looked at him with a tinge of anxiety, but he was no ordinary panhandling loon, and he seemed to have won over even the beat cops, who nodded at him with respect, as if he were some celebrity.

His tagline to passersby was, “We must do lunch.” Casper found himself unable to resist and paid for an “Appliance Reading,” which indicated that he was a Cuisinart soft serve ice-cream maker. But perhaps the ragamuffin ambassador for the Midtown Gotham night had some other skills, because without any word from Casper, he left his signboard and dirty pillow and ushered the albino over to 7
^th
 Avenue—and during a break in the traffic, he urged him into standing on top of a manhole.

“This is it,” he said. “This is my 
power point
. Right here. But, see—the thing about a power point is that you can’t stay on it.”

An armada of taxis was on their way south from the Park toward them. They were forced back to the curb.

“My tip to you, my friend, is to return to your power point.”

This had struck Casper as profound advice—or at least surprisingly sensible, given the open-air asylum of Times Square. He’d left Manhattan a few hours later under a flatiron sky and began the pilgrimage back to Joplin, the place that Reverend America had come back to whenever a faith and fire tour was finished.

But of course traveling and arriving are two very different things. Now old memories and images flooded his mind. The bandstand in Schifferdecker Park . . . the red boomerang sign for the Capri Motel. He pulled a slip from his Medicine Bag.

CHILLING PREDICTIONS FOUND IN ANCIENT SCROLLS

A KCS coal train clanged through town a few blocks away . . . the lament of the whistle, which at that distance was more like a horn, echoed off the storefront facades, sending him back. Grand Falls City Park . . . Range Line Road. Their neighbor, old Silas Cave, who played the musical saw.

Joplin was once a classic Main Street town. Faded ads for “Buggies” could be seen on the red brick buildings. Thomas Hart Benton has a famous mural in City Hall—maybe people still throw flowers from the Redings Mill Bridge for luck.

The community had grown up around lead mining camps, and then the discovery of zinc, which was called “jack.” There were wild lawless times in the days of the saloons, gambling halls and cathouses—but the mineral money funded imposing civic architecture and ornate Victorian mansions once—the streamlined modernist grandeur of the Union Depot. The railroad, and most importantly, Route 66, made Joplin a great American crossroads. Once.

It’s certainly a place of legends—like the Hornet Spook Light, just out of town—a mysterious ball of floating fire that appears on the dark country roads around midnight. Some link it to the double suicide of a pair of Quapaw Indian lovers—or an old miner who lost his family to an Indian raiding party and is forever searching for them with his lantern. A bolder tale relates to an Osage Indian chief who was decapitated and is still hunting for his head.

It was in Joplin that Bonnie and Clyde had once famously hidden out. They left behind their camera, which gave us the pictures that became so notorious. Casper had always liked these local myths.

Now he was back and wondering what to do with himself. He supposed he should’ve been hungry—but he wasn’t. Not for food.

Joplin has been renowned for eating since Route 66 days. Steak-burgers and shoestring fries, Fred & Reds for chili, or their famous concoction, Spaghetti Red. Truckers and sightseers made that greasy spoon known throughout the country—even the world. And in the good times, Poppy and Rose had taken him to Wilder’s Steak House downtown. He remembered the neon cocktail sign, down near the discount furniture store on South Main Street, where he’d first gotten drunk, back when he was going mad.

At the start, they’d lived in a modest house in tree-lined Vandalia Street (which was where Berina’s aunt’s house had been), north of downtown. Back in the shrubbery there were still pits and mineshafts, and a place called Rum Jungle, where he’d later smash goldenrod skeletons with Summer and she’d whisper in his ear like wind in green corn. “Oh, Matty.”

That area had long been cleaned up, but he’d read in a little library in Ohio about how the economy had created a whole new set of problems. A tent city had sprung up under the Seventh Street Viaduct, and when those homeless people were routed from there, they took refuge in the woods of the Frisco Trail, which dates back to the Cherokee Trail of Tears.

When the Reverend America money started to come in, the family had moved to a larger place on Moffat Avenue, closer to the historic Murphyburg district with its grand Victorian homes, which was where Berina had her boarding house. He didn’t have the heart to go by there. Too many ghosts—too many recollections of Summer’s voice, the way she’d turn her head because of her injured eye. 
In what place of darkness shall I seek the light?

The town was suspiciously quiet, except for the distant whine of the interstate and a few late night cars. The air smelled just as he remembered it—a mix of railroad iron, diner grill and highway asphalt, with a hint of grape drink spilled on pavement. The deep after midnight smell of sad America.

The air was warming, with the first hint of summer already moving like a shadow over the country to the south. He started walking, trying to connect with the past. Memories of going to the 66 Speed Bowl with Summer—the spit and detonation—a full moon dissolving like a pill into water—twisted scrap and mufflers farting like shotguns, boiling radiators and steaming tires—Cougar Martin laying it down on the backstretch, spraying dirt—men in overalls, pick-ups flashing their lights—the PA system missing every other word—foot-long hot dogs bloody with ketchup and slick bags of jam-filled doughnuts—John Deere caps, permed hair and painted nails . . .

He felt that creeping sense of lostness you do when you return to a place you know, and then realize that you only think you know it. He made it a block away before hobbling back to the depot to see the eastbound bus arrive and depart, a couple of shadows emerging. The waiting cars pulled away. Soon he was alone again.

So, he was startled when a female voice behind him asked, “Hey Mister, you want a blow job? Good price.”

When he whirled around, he was surprised to say the least by the figure behind this street level inquiry. As tall as he was, she was short, with flaming red hair, shoulder length, and the kind of freckles on her nose you might’ve seen once on a corner newsboy. At one very quick glance, he’d have said she was just a child. Despite her diminutive height, however, a second look couldn’t fail to take in her grown up figure—of the kind that requires a serious over the shoulder boulder holster. Under a fake Wal-Mart leather jacket that smelled of Poison, that was all she was wearing—pink frilled, like hastily made cupcake icing—with a little black skirt and ripped black nylons.

Along with the spike heeled shoes she’d given up on, and a wrinkled purse, she was carrying an attempt at a suitcase, but it might’ve been better used to carry bottles out to the recycling bin. Her gothic eye makeup was smudged and it was obvious from the streaks on her cheeks that she’d been crying. A closer inspection indicated she was carrying more baggage than in her hands.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Sheet,” she spat, through a mouth full of gum. “Get a new line.”

“What?” Casper balked. He could smell that it was Black Jack gum.

“Never mind. I just thought you might want some—and you don’t look like y’all know how to get it no other way.”

She made a move to get past him, but he reached out for her (as it would turn out, in more ways than one).

“Are you a prostitute?” he asked, unable to help himself.

“Mister, I can be whatever your greasy ass wants me to be. Your daughter, your girlfriend. If you want me to be twelve, I’m twelve. If the cops come, I’m eighteen. Most of ‘em have done me anyways. Don’t worry about that shit.”

Her accent confused him. It was a mix of black and cracker. She said “greazy” like many Missourians . . . but he heard Texas too. Not quite Southern, but not Midwestern either. A crossroads voice in a crossroads town . . . nearer to dawn than midnight.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, setting down his knapsack.

“Mister, I sucked enough cock to know that wuddn’t your question. You was askin’ about my age and a whole lotta shit that ain’t your biz. OK? You’re lookin’ down on me and not just ‘cause I’m short.”

“I’m not looking down on you,” Casper insisted, looking down at her.

“All I can tell you is I wuddn’t born yesterday,” the molten redhead replied.

“I believe you,” Casper answered. “But it looks like someone else is going to be born soon.”

“That what you’re worried about? Gentleman? Well, jes take it easy in the saddle, son. Me and mine will be cool.”

“You need money,” Casper said, wondering if the girl could be fifteen, which would make her about the age his own mother had been when he’d arrived. Mink Shoals. Joplin. People always arriving.

“Sheet. Man, you’re a genius. Like who doesn’t? I jes offer to give you head—and you work it out like that—I need money. You call me a whore and you’re surprised about money. Do you want your dick sucked or not? We can talk about the big show once that gets rollin’. This is the Show Me state, case you haven’t heard.”