The Rabbi (37 page)

The tent was filling rapidly. A florid man in a white linen suit came down the aisle, leading two Negro men who carried between them an ambulance cot. On the cot lay the stiff form of a paralyzed blonde girl about twenty years old.

An usher came hurrying over to them. “Just set it in the aisle close to the seats, an' you sit down right next to her. That's what the aisle seats are saved for,” he said. The Negroes set down the cot and went away. The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a bill.

“Bless you,” the usher said.

There was a curtain and a stage at the front of the tent, and a runway leading from the stage into the audience. Now two television cameras were driven out by cameramen who rode them like jockeys. Focusing, they turned the eyes of their cameras on the people in the seats, and faces swam across the screens of the monitors like schools of fish. The people stared up at themselves. Some of them whistled and waved their hands. The blind man smiled. “What's going on?” he asked. Michael told him.

Presently a handsome, dark-haired young man stepped through the curtain, carrying a trumpet. He wore no jacket. His white shirt was starched and he had on a blue silk tie in a stiff Windsor knot. His hair was carefully slicked back and his teeth gleamed when he smiled. “I am Cal Justice,” he said into the microphone. “Some of you might know me better as the Trumpeter of God.” There was applause. “Billie Joe will be out in just a few minutes. In the meantime, I'd like to play you a little song you all know and love.”

He played “The Ninety and Nine.” He could play that trumpet. At first the notes were slow and mournful. But the second time around the tempo picked up and somebody started keeping time with his hands, and soon people all over the tent were clapping and singing, following the wild golden thread of the horn's music as it rose above their sound. In front of Michael the fat lady had become a human metronome, her tic keeping perfect time with the clapping.

The applause following the music was strong and sustained, but it heightened when another man in shirtsleeves stepped from behind the curtain. He was a large man, broad-shouldered, big-headed, and big-handed. He had a fleshy nose and a wide mouth. The lids of his eyes were heavy.

The trumpeter left the stage. The big man stood in its center, smiling, while the people below him clapped their hands and shouted words of praise.

Then he raised both hands to the sky, fingers outspread. The noise was erased. From overhead a microphone dropped on a boom until it was close enough to his face for the sound of hoarse, superhuman breathing to fill the tent.

“Hallelujah,” said Billie Joe Raye. “God loves you.”

“Hallelujah,” said people all over the tent.

“A-man,” muttered the blind man.

“God loves you,” Billie Joe repeated. “Say it three times, with me: God loves me.”

“
GOD LOVES ME
.”

“
GOD LOVES ME
.”

“
GOD LOVES ME
.”

“That's good,” Billie Joe said, nodding happily.

“Now, I know why you're here, brothers and sisters. You're here because you're sick in body and mind and soul, and you need the healing love of God.”

Silence, and the amplified sound of breathing.

“But do you know why
I'm
here?” asked the preacher's mouth from the stage and from two dozen television monitors all over the tent.

“To cure us!” somebody near Michael shouted.

“To make me well again!”

“To help my boy to live!” a woman screamed, pushing back her chair and dropping to her knees.

“A-man,” said the blind man.

“No,” Billie Joe said. “I can't cure you.”

A woman sobbed.

“Don't say that,” another woman cried. “Don't you say that, hear?”

“No, sister, I
can't
cure you,” Billie Joe repeated. More people began to weep.

“But
GOD
can cure you. Through these hands.” He held them up, fingers widely spread, for everyone to see.

Hope was revived in a flurry of hosannas.

“God can do
anything
. Say it with me,” Billie Joe said.

“GOD CAN DO
ANYTHING
.”

“So God can cure
you
.”

“SO GOD CAN CURE
ME
.”

“Because God loves
you
.”

“BECAUSE GOD LOVES
ME
.”

“A-man,” whispered the blind man, tears welling up in his sightless eyes.

Billie Joe sucked in a breath with an electronically amplified whoosh. “Once I was a dying boy,” he declared.

The broadcast sound of breathing, slow and sorrowful.

“The Devil already had my soul and the worms were getting ready to play hide-and-go-seek in my flesh. My lungs were eaten with consumption. My blood was corrupted by anemia. My mammy and pappy knew I was dying.
I
knew I was dying and I was afraid.”

Breathing like a chased-down stag struggling to suck one more portion of air into his lungs.

“I had wallowed in sin. I had drunk cheap whiskey. I had gambled like the soldiers who cast lots for the garments of the Son of God. I had fornicated with wild and diseased women as wanton as the whores of Babylon.

“But one day as I lay in my bed full of despair, I felt something strange happening inside of me. Something 'way down inside began to stir like the first soft stirring of a baby chick when it knows it has to start working away at the hard shell of the egg.

“And the tips of my fingers and the ends of my toes began to tingle, and the place where I felt that first stirring burst into a warm glow that no whiskey distilled by man could make, and I could feel the light of God streaming out of my eyes, and I leaped out of that bed and I shouted in my glory and
IN MY FULL HEALTH:

“‘
MAMMY! PAPPY!
The Lord has touched me!
AND I AM SAVED!
'”

Throughout the tent there passed a shudder of hope and happiness, and people lifted their eyes and thanked their God.

Next to the fat lady a young man sat, his cheek wet with tears. “Please, God,” he was saying. “Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.”

Michael saw the young man's face for the first time, and with a feeling of numb unreality he realized that it was Dick Kramer, a member of the congregation of Temple Sinai.

From the stage, Billie Joe looked down benevolently at the people in the seats. “From that day onward, although I was but a stripling, I preached the word of God, at first at meetings throughout these parts and then, as some of you good people know, as pastor of the Holy Fundamentalist Church over at Whalensville.

“And it wasn't until two years ago that I thought I was anything but a preacher of the Word.

“Some of our men were laying out a baseball field for the youngsters of the Sunday School, on land behind the church. And out of the goodness of his heart, Bert Simmons had brought over his light tractor, and was leveling some knolls. On a rock no bigger than a beehive, all at once his tractor bucked. It flipped over, pinning Brother Simmons' hand under its terrible weight.

“When I was summoned from the church, I could see blood coming out of the work glove. When we pried the machine off, from the way that glove was mashed and flattened, I knew Bert's hand would have to be cut off. And I dropped to my knees in the fresh earth and I lifted my eyes to the heavens, and I said, ‘Lord, must this good servant be punished for having aided in Thy work?' And suddenly, my hands began to twitch and I felt power in them, surging and crackling like electricity was shooting out of the tips of my fingers, and I picked up Brother Simmons' crushed hand in mine, and I said, ‘God, heal this man!'

“And when Brother Simmons took off his glove, his hand was whole and unhurt, and I could not deny that a miracle had taken place.

“And I seemed to hear the voice of God saying, ‘Son, once I healed you. Now you will carry My healing power throughout the family of man.'

“And since then the Lord has healed thousands through my hands. Because of his goodness, the lame have walked, the blind have seen, and the afflicted have been relieved of the burden of pain.”

Billie Joe bowed his head.

An organ began to play softly.

Presently he looked up.

“I want everybody here to touch the back of the chair in front of him and bow his head, please.

“Come on. Get those heads down. Everybody.

“Now I want every one here who wishes in his heart to seek Jesus Christ to raise his or her hand straight up in the air. Keep your head bowed, but raise your hand.”

Michael looked around and observed perhaps twenty-five hands raised.

“Glory, glory what a sight, brothers and sisters,” Billie Joe said. “All over this tent hundreds of hands are pointing toward God. Now, you people who are raising your hands, stand right up on your two feet. Stand right up, quickly now. Everybody who has his hand in the air.

“Now walk forward and we'll say a special little prayer.” About twelve or fifteen people, men and women and three teen-age girls and one boy, came down to the front of the tent. They were taken behind a curtain by one of the preacher's assistants.

Then, while the organ played, Billie Joe went up and down the aisles, praying over the stretcher cases.

While he was doing this, one team of ushers passed the collection plates while another team passed out cards to those who wished to see the healer. All over the tent, people began to sign the cards.

“Will you show me where?” asked the blind man. As the man signed, Michael read the card. It was a release giving permission for the signer's picture to be used in periodicals and on television.

Cal Justice and the unseen organist played two more hymns, “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” and “Rock of Ages,” and then Billie Joe was back on the stage. “If you will form a line in the aisle and be patient until it is your turn,” he said, “we will pray to God about your afflictions, you and I.”

All over the tent, people stood.

In front of Michael, Dick Kramer rose with them. He glanced around as he waited for others in his row to move out, and his eyes met those of his rabbi.

For a moment they stared at one another, something in the boy's face making Michael's breath catch in his throat. Then Kramer turned and plunged blindly toward the aisle, his elbow thumping into the fat lady's side. “Here!” she said, sitting down again.

“Dick,” Michael called. “Wait for me!” He began to move down his own row of seats toward the aisle, repeating apologies as he pushed past people.

But ultimately the way was blocked by the stretcher of the paralyzed girl. The florid man was bending over it, his mouth slack. “God damn it, Evelyn,” he was saying, “you move those limbs! You can move, if you want to.” He turned to the usher, his head trembling. “You go fetch Mr. Raye, boy. You tell him to get the hell back here and pray some more.”

 

28

Dick Kramer first learned that he had not gotten away free and clear one autumn morning in the middle of the pine woods outside Athens. He and his cousin Sheldon had been methodically working their dogs through some small hills. Since they were among the best shots at the University, the house committee of their fraternity had assigned them to supply the frat's kitchen with squab and quail, relieving them of less attractive duties so that they might hunt. The two boys were hunting competitors of long standing, and now Dick was feeling especially fine. He had counted only three shots from Sheldon's direction, and he knew that even if each shot meant a bird in his cousin's bag, he was far ahead. It was his virgin effort with a new 20-gauge Browning over-and-under. His old shotgun had been a 16-gauge, and he had been afraid that the smaller pellet area of the new piece would handicap him, but he had a brace of quail and two mourning doves in his bag, and even as the thought of this warmed him another dove rose with a sudden flutter, wings blurring black with motion against the blue sky, and he snapped the shotgun to his shoulder and at precisely the right instant pressed the trigger gently, feeling the jolt and watching the rising bird pause and then turn to stone and drop.

The Redhead recovered the dove and Dick took the bird and patted the dog and reached into his pocket. His hand
closed over a dog candy—his right hand—but when he took it out of his pocket his fingers wouldn't uncurl to give Red his reward.

Sheldon came trudging over the hill, looking upset, with old Bessie panting and slobbering after him. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “This keeps up, those guys are going to have to open a couple of cans of baked beans.” He drew his shirtsleeve over his forehead. “I got only two. How'd you make out?”

Dick held up the dove he had just removed from the Redhead's muzzle. What he thought he said next was, “I got four beside this one.” But his cousin looked at him, grinning.