High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel (34 page)

Two tables, crossways, long wooden rough-cut slabs. The faithful take of the bread, and taste of the wine, their faces low and humbled under Heaven. The black folk take of less bread and of water, away at a farther table.

“Look this way!” he cries. “Because the Lord God knows your every secret and even now He knows your name.” He demands: “I said look this way! Because this will be like no sermon before, a true American Gospel!” He can make out their mouths moving, the mumblings of prayer inaudible in the ruckus and racket of chant.

Only one man shows visible interest, standing off at the far side of the stage. A sack over one shoulder, the man is smiling, and Dowse assumes the smile is for his sermon, a great enthusiasm for the Gospel. The crowd around this man gathers, moving about, but those seated pay little attention. “Do you not smell the good clean air?” Dowse cries out. “This land made new in His spirit? His blood? I say, look this way!”

The heads finally look up from the table.

The backs of the others press up against them on the benches, jostling the cups in their hands. They all look his way, and their mouths fall open from shock. They rise—and see Gillon Dowse, in imitation of Christ. His arms extend in a crucifix gesture, Bible limp in his grip. Ankles crossed, he balances on one foot and drops his head to his chest.

He raises his head: “Now, won’t you listen?”

There is a murmur of shocked hush at the tables. The smiling man with the sack, he whistles, he approves. “Take a look at him now,” shouts the man.

Then another voice from the crowd: “Heresy!”

“Profane!”

“He claims to be the Christ!”

Dowse undoes his posture. “I claim nothing of the sort! But a recognition of His mercy, of His sacrifice and glory. I die for Him each day. Every day! And you die this day, too, for our Lord!”

The movement by the stage begins to drag, and the crowd calms even while the outlying listeners become one vast dancing witness. Here in Dowse’s small assembly they start slowing, they set themselves apart. They still themselves and they listen. He hears the crying of a young boy, “Daddy! Daddy!”

He looks out among the crowd, at the man with the sack, and then to the other side of the stage where stands, not very far away, a very large nigger, held back by a crowd of what seem to be concerned white folk.

Whence comes the crying voice?

Dowse shouts, “For what reason do you throw yourselves? You dance in the woods like witches, when the Lord Himself walks these hills and you’re too busy to see Him!” Dowse raises his hands in the air, shaping the world in his hands. “And our Heavenly Father sees us!”

The lull is widening now, as more of them stop and listen to the man onstage.

Dowse turns, and takes the torch from behind him. He holds it aloft out front. He is a fire breather and his mouth speaks Truth: “Do you see this face? See it? This is
my
face.
My
mouth. My soul stands before the Lord, and for it He knows my name!” His hair is dark wine pouring from a skull. “And He knows this heart inside my chest no less than He knows yours.”

The crowd nods and murmurs.

The nigger is now holding back a boy, a small white boy, as the crowd wrestles with the nigger’s thick wrists.

Dowse looks away, says, “And He knows my dreams no less than He knows yours.”

A voice shouts back, “It’s true!”

He walks back and forth across the stage. “For whom did the good Christ die on his cross? Tell me, who?”

Another shouts, “For me!”

“Yes! And no less for me, my Christ!” Dowse looks up to the night sky. “He is mine, I am His, and the Lord God knows my name. Now who among you in this land is not the child of God? Who among you?”

They all wave their arms, and nod, Yes, yes, yes. The man with the sack is awkwardly clapping, his hands still gripping the cloth of the sack.

Again, he whistles.

The circle of listeners grows in circumference, slowing outward like grass in a wind.

The boy is now yelling, and Dowse understands this was the crying he’d heard before, and yet he can hardly make out what the boy is saying, “My father, my father”? The boy is pointing at the clapping man, who now sets his sack down. But not on the ground—on the stage, on Dowse’s stage. What presumption! Dowse ventures close, has half a mind to kick it off. But before he can, the man says boldly: “Why don’t you just go ahead and make it rain, preacher? Make it rain!”

Torch in hand, Dowse says to the stranger. “I’m not the Christ, good brother. Never said I was. And I suggest you test not God, lest He answer harshly.”

“No test for God, friend.” The man laughs again. “It’s a test for you. And I ain’t your brother.” He waves his hat at the gathering crowd. “Go on, we’re farmers here, and it’s a dry season so we could use a little miracle making. But we don’t know much theater. So come on, let’s see us some rain!”

A few laughs from the crowd, a few sniggers, and the faces look back and forth, wondering which of these two men will win.

Dowse places the torch on its stand. “Tell me, friend,” he says, pulling his fingers through his hair. “What brings you if not a soul in need of a cure?” He looks at the crowd: Let us hear the man answer me this one! He sees the nigger talking to the white folk around him—where is the boy?—and the nigger is now getting smaller as the crowd walks him away toward the tree line. The boy is now struggling to free himself from the arms of a large white man who looks like a farmer. The boy is clearly yelling, “My father! My father!”

The man says to Dowse, “I’m here because I’m a man of luck, and good luck, I guarantee it!”

Dowse shakes his head and taps his palm against his Bible, chuckling. “Brother, only God guarantees.”

“Then you must not be from around here, because out here we make our own luck. We got no choice!”

“I hear that,” laughs a man in the crowd. “And with any luck we’ll get rain.”

The man now reaches inside the sack onstage. “Well, I ain’t afraid of God, friend. He and I have no quibbling. Just with you and your clan here clamoring like roosters.” He raises his head. “I’m a man of my own standing, and I make my own luck. Who else?” He pulls a large clay jar from his sack, a carved bearded face covering one side, and he says, “This’ll keep you clean of his kind, or any other sour luck comes your way.” He holds the jar above his head. “Who say’ll give me three dollars for a good-luck jar?”

The crowd shouts back, some call him a heretic.

He shouts, “Good luck’s all around you. Can’t you smell it in the trees? And I’ve bottled all you need to take it home!”

A woman in a long coat shouts, “One dollar!” She shoves it at the man, taken in by his swagger, and tries to claim her purchase. The man holds the jar high, saying, “I make my own luck. Here’s proof, a money-back guarantee! Show us proof, Fire-top! We need wheat before there’s bread. Give us a miracle!”

“Here is a money changer dealing in the presence of God! And God alone makes miracles,” says Dowse. “We give God no orders! We’d be in need of a new tongue just to whisper aloud His name!” Dowse shows the face of his Bible, and stamps his foot on the stage. Pacing. He is becoming excited.

Their applause takes them away from the newcomer. Hear, hear!

The lulled crowd awakens, as Dowse can no longer help himself. “Because freedom from a British king is no longer enough! The time has come for his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth!”

The crowd waves their hands and they move about in the clearing, nodding in assent. Dowse watches them stamp their feet and run in place, some in circles like horses.

The boy fights the farmer’s hold.

“We do speak the same language, brother.” He points to the boy’s father, at the foot of the stage. “But what do you care for rain? I know what it is you seek,” he says, swirling and grasping the torch, leaving fire trails in the air. “Liberty in body and soul! Our fathers, and our grandfathers, our brothers and sons all died for us, for this nation. I swear it was God gave us victory!”

The crowd cheers. They raise their knees and run in place, spending the Spirit that fills them too full.

“It was Captain Christ who gave us revolution!”

A birdcall echoes and the crowd shouts, Amen! Amen! Amen!

“He offers salvation in this world, and a salvation from it!”

The man stays beside the stage, tickled and pleased, even admiring. He is immersed in the great show.

“A constitution,” Dowse shouts, “written by the heads of a Wild Beast! This is your land, yours! This place marked by His High Holy Spirit! Heal this place with me, and wait not for others. Heal thyself! Forsake the Pharisee help of doctors, and lawyers, of judges, and make of this land the Lord’s backyard. Forsake earthly princes and kings! For none of them know my name, and they know not your name! What lay in my heart is sin, God knows, but
that
He knows means He is within me. And I swear He knows my name!” He leans toward the salesman smiling by the stage. “You look at me good, now, brother.”

“Oh, I’m looking.” The man laughs.

“He knows your name, too, good stranger.”

The boy shouts, “Daddy!”

Dowse looks, and sees the nigger is back, and now expertly takes hold of the large farmer, squeezes him from behind as if hugging him. The farmer’s arms release the boy. The boy falls to the ground and stumbles, slipping in the mud. The farmer looks to be asleep in the dirt, and disappears as the crowd envelops him. The boy is pushing his way through the crowd. Pushing his way toward the stage. What tenacity, what strength, what faith, this child.

Dowse turns to the man, and says: “You are but a child in His eyes! And He knows every corner of your sinning soul, but
that
He knows is good news. Be sure.” He wags a flagging torch before the gathering, and a thunder crack breaks above the hills. A flash of lightning paints white light across the clearing—a brief and moon-white glimpse of a hundred faces, a shock-still dance in the glare. He extends an open hand to the laughing man. He laughs along with him, a joyous yawp.

The man yells up to the preacher, openly admiring his showmanship, and shouts, “You tricky son of a bitch!” The rain slaps down on both of their faces.

*   *   *

The sky has opened up like a cataract, a down-pouring of rain. The man stands at the front of the gathering, still some hundred feet away, shaking hands with the preacher.

Cotten lowers the boy to the ground. “I’ll go with you.”

The rain falls in wet slicing sheets, as the field goes muddy. The faithful are running in place in the rain. They dance, fueling themselves into a fervor. Cotten pulls back at the boy, his thick hand on Orr’s thin wrist. The crowd lose themselves ecstatically in the shower. Their wet hands open and waiting.

Cotten shouts, holding the boy’s wrist, “Don’t get lost!”

The boy pulls away. “Let me go!”

The man is laughing along with the preacher.

But Orr knows his father’s take on preachers, and still the man shakes hands with the preacher. Then comes a rush of onlookers in a wet wave of legs and bellies. Orr is caught between two strange women. His face is hot, the rain is cold, and he loses sight of his father.

“Ask and ye shall receive!” says the preacher.

The dancing is now at fever pitch, while some run in place and some in circles. The worshippers exhaust themselves, they empty themselves, and bells ring out in the rain.

Orr is pulled away. A woman on her knees pulls him closer.

Cotten’s thick hand comes grabbing, but the wet palm slides down along Orr’s arm, and the shaking crowd swallows Cotten whole. The woman on her knees is singing. Pale as death, she is old, and dank with rain. She sings a song Orr cannot understand. He sees through the wetness of her dress, and looks away. He’s losing his breath, and the cold slapping water on his warm skin makes him go blurry inside. He looks between the moving bodies and the ribbons of rain for his father, Where’s my daddy? The crowd pushes him closer to the stage. They push him as he shouts for his father. He falls and he rolls to the ground.

A strong thick hand reaches out for him.

Orr shouts out, “Let me go!”

Cotten lifts the boy. “You’ll see better from my shoulders.” But Orr wrestles against the big man as the white onlookers watch, Let me go.

“Let the boy go!”

Dowse looks for the boy.

Another voice, “Get your paws off that boy!”

Dowse sees the nigger make a path for the boy, and then squat low, his round head no longer heads high above the others, as he sidles off stealthily into the crowd. This pleases Dowse. God be with you, black. “See God’s children sacralize this land with their worship!” he shouts. “Today is a day for our Lord and God, so give yourself to Christ and die this day. Kill off your old ways and come back born in His Spirit!”

Orr slips through the wet limbs and falls to the floor. Picks himself up and moves toward the front of the stage, can’t see his daddy from here, and the fear is getting colder. He falls again just before the stage, face streaked with mud.

“And He comes with a great big stick! A brand-new Heaven and a brand-new Earth. Because the End is oh so near, I swear! And
this
time I know is the right time, the only time, for this generation will not pass before the Day of the Coming of the Lord! A revolution of God’s own making, and no longer do we live in a time for waiting. And these years made holy are almost over, the Christ is finally come. See Him come even now in the hills, strolling like the walking sun, the trees like grass below His feet. For His head stays dry in the heavens, and His feet are wet in the Earth. Because Death has no sway on the Coming of the Lord. And Death will have no more dominion! Where is thy sting? Where is thy victory, O Death? See our Christ, He is come!”

Dowse drops to his knees.

There is a flash of lightning in the rain—then wait—wait for the buckshot of thunder.

Orr steps to the riser, Help me up.

He waves to his father, whose mouth is agape as he looks at the crowd.

What is happening to this great crowd? Then peripherally, miraculously, most unexpectedly of all there manifests a young boy who, to the man, looks like his son. What on earth are you doing here, boy? Get you away from that stage!