Pig Island (3 page)

Chapter 4

‘Rage against the Philistines of science. Do not allow the arrogance of the medical community to rape and subdue your natural self-healing powers. Wrest control over your life.“
The Psychogenic Healing Ministries, volume 14,
chapter 5, verse 1

The Psychogenic Healing Ministries would say my problems with Lexie were all about my godlessness. They’d say that if I only opened my heart to the Lord, that if I’d only grow towards his cosmic love, in no time I’d find myself growing back towards Lexie. And she’d grow towards me too. I’d never been to the Positive Living Centre on Pig Island, but I knew more than I needed about what the PHM would say about me and Lex. I knew their philosophies like I wrote them myself.

What happened between me and their founder, Pastor Malachi Dove, all starts back in Liverpool twenty years ago. It’s the mid-eighties. Liverpool’s the unemployment capital of Europe, and my cousin Finn is the closest thing to a God I know. He’s a charm bird, totally does not look like my cousin with his blond, mosh-pit hair and ratty nose. The Kurt Cobain of Toxteth. He’s the first in our family to get into university and he comes home summer holidays to Self-pity City talking like a Londoner. He tells us all about university and the birds he’s shagged. He’s going to be a journalist, travel the world. Everyone hates him. Me—I think I can see the sun shine when he bends over.

It’s probably the girls that do it for me, because by the next year I’ve got a place at UCL and I’m ready to follow him down south. Me and Finn together, I’m thinking, the copping potential is unlimited. Then something happens. Something that changes the course of our lives. Finn’s ma gets cancer.

Now, I’ve always really liked his ma, always thought she was totally sound. Actually, what I’ve always thought is, she’s clever. But what does she do, good Catholic girl, when she’s told she’s dying? She refuses chemo. She scoffs down shark cartilage and flower remedies by the lorryload. She visits Lourdes. She ends up selling the house and trailing some faith-healer around the United States. His name is Pastor Malachi Dove. He believes in NO
MEDICAL INTERVENTION.
He believes in the power of prayer and positive thinking. Two months later she comes back to Toxteth and dies in agony in a hospice in Ormskirk. So it goes, as Vonnegut would say.

For me and Finn, religion’s what you get twatted for. Aled up on a Saturday night it’ll be Everton and Liverpool, or Papes and Prods that starts the fight. And seeing Finn’s ma die like that gives us a rage for Pastor Malachi Dove that won’t go away. We get copies of
Charisma
magazine and find he’s in the south-west US. With the money Finn’s ma leaves we get on the next flight to New Mexico. We think we’re gonzos. Bad Boys doing the Right Thing.

Oral Roberts has just told the world God will kill him if the congregation doesn’t stump up eight million and Peter Popoff’s just been outed on
The Johnny Carson Show
. We spend about a week on the breakaway-church circuit, trailing all these characters around the south-west, getting to know how it works: we meet rapture partisans, pretri-bulationists, preterists, post-wrathers and the midtribbers. We go to deliverance ministries and take part in prayer chains. Slowly we’re narrowing it down to our target. And in July it happens. We meet Pastor Malachi Dove. Chief minister and founder of the Psychogenic Healing Ministries Foundation.

It’s in a convention centre in Albuquerque. Air-con because it’s hot as hell outside. Finn and me, we’re about as out of place as you can get: there’s me in my beanie and striker’s donkey jacket, Finn in his Big Kahuna T-shirt and a mincy little Italian-style zip-up bag that would get him a good twatting in Seaforth; here it contains a loaded tape recorder and mic. We sit in row T, thinking everyone’s staring at us. Thinking everyone knows for sure why we’re there.

The first surprise is the stage. It’s kind of empty and clinical. Feels like a hospital theatre, not a church. The helpers, all women, are a cross between angels and theatre technicians: eighth Dan judo pants and gleaming white plimsolls on bare feet. On stage a stretcher is wheeled up to a screen with a blue sky projected on it. Me and Finn sit there muttering between us, all ready to start snickering. Then Malachi Dove comes on stage and we get surprise number two.

First off, he’s not American, he’s English. (From Croydon, we find out later, son of a paperclip salesman.) And he’s dead normal, not dressed in some huckster’s suit: he’s wearing a corduroy jacket and he looks more like a young teacher at a public school, with his soft, boyish good looks and thatch of blond hair flopping down over his forehead. Rimless specs on a tip-tilted nose and you can see his tendency is to get fat, not mean. Years later, when Leo DiCaprio is famous, me and Finn turn to each other and go, ‘
Malachi Dove. Malachi Dove and Leo. Separated at birth.“’

Malachi Dove doesn’t bound on stage. He comes on quietly, sort of shuffling, clearing his throat and tucking the specs in his jacket pocket, like he’s going to deliver a theology lecture. He sits on a little stool and looks seriously and thoughtfully into the dark auditorium while the place erupts: cheers, hoots, promises of undying love echoing off the walls. He waits till the noise dies down. Then he moves the microphone to his mouth, clumsily, banging it on his nose. He grins at the mistake. “Uh—sorry,” he goes. “Technology’s not my strong point.”

The audience erupts again, applauds like crazy.

He holds up his hands modestly. “Look … let me explain who I am.” The congregation goes quiet. The assistants take their seats at the edge of the stage. Malachi Dove waits. Then he fixes the audience with his pale eyes. There’s silence in the place now. “Whatever you think,” he says, “we are all religious. We may believe in different prophets. My prophet is Jesus. Yours may be … I don’t know, Muhammad perhaps? Or Krishna? Some of you may think you have no prophet at all, and that, too, is fine. We don’t check your faith at the door.”

A murmur of laughter goes round the hall. They know that twinkle in his eye, that ironic twitch of a smile.

“But one thing is sure. We all believe in the same
God. I
know
your
God. And
you
know
my
God. Maybe by a different name, but you know him.” He breaks off and grins again, throwing a hand at the audience, like they just told him a risqué joke. “OK, don’t panic. I’m not going to quote the Bible at you.”

More laughter. Finn nudges me. He’s got the mic poking out of the little zip-up bag now, like the nose of an animal, pointed in the direction of the stage. We’re waiting for the wackiness to start so we can get outraged. On stage Malachi holds up his empty hands. He makes a great pantomime of studying first one bare palm, then the other.

“Nothing special about these hands. Is there? Just your average pair of hands. I don’t pretend to have power in them. I can’t send a lightning bolt from them. I know all about my hands because I, like you, have not been content to believe what the tent-show evangelists tell me. I have made it my business to study the subject. Did you know, for example, that a soldier in the victorious army will survive wounds that can kill a soldier in the defeated army? Did you know that? Do you understand the dance of chemicals in your body? Your body …‘

He points a finger into the audience. He’s smiling, and maybe he’s already got to me on some level, because I ignore this sudden image I get in my head that he’s not a human but a husky dog, staring into my eyes from the stage.

“Your body can heal itself.
It
has the knowledge. It only needs the right chemicals. Since the day I left my parents’ home I have never crossed the threshold of a medical professional.
And I never will
!” He looks at his hands again, one at a time, like they’re a mystery to him. “My faith allows me to channel my endorphins. And with a faith this strong I can channel it to you, too.”

‘
What crap,“’
Finn mutters.

‘
What bukkakes
,“ I say. We both shake our heads. But we’re subdued, and we’re not meeting each other’s eyes. We’ve both got a glimpse of what Finn’s ma saw in Pastor Malachi Dove. Straight off when the lights come on, a healing line forms in the aisle going to the stage. The disabled are wheeled out and helped on to the stage by relatives. One of Malachi’s helpers takes them by the arm: Asunción (we find out her name from the crowd), a total vision of horniness with her hair in a long squaw plait snaking down the back of her white judo jacket, keeps production-lining these invalids up on to the stage, keeping a hand on their arms, holding them back until Malachi is ready. Then she nudges them forward, half lifting them, half talking them up on to the stretcher where they lie on their backs staring up at Malachi, who stands above them, back to the audience, both hands on the stretcher, resting his weight there, his head bowed and eyes closed, like he’s waiting for a migraine to go. He doesn’t pray. He just waits. No hellfire. After a few moments he places his hand on the body part and closes his eyes again. Then he lifts his hands and whispers something to the patient, who gets up and leaves. Or is helped away by relatives.

“Go on,” whispers Finn, nudging me. “Go on. Get up there.”

I get up and join the queue. I feel like a twat because I’m the tallest. All I can see in front and behind and to the side of me are Sunday hats, little blue and pink feathers quivering in the netting. After about half an hour waiting I’m up on the stage under the heat of the spotlights. Malachi glances at me, and for a moment, seeing my height and my strength, he hesitates. But if he thinks it’s a trick he hides it.

“What’s your name?”

“Joe.”

“What part of you has brought you here tonight, Joe? What part of your body?”

“Bowels,” I say, because that’s how Finn’s ma went and it’s the first thing that comes into my head. “It’s a cancer. Sir.”

I get on the stretcher, thinking about Finn sniggering in the audience. Malachi stands above me, head bent, eyes closed, sweat coming out from under his blond thatch. I register the pores in his cheeks. I see he’s wearing face powder or foundation. Suddenly I’m totally interested in what he’s going to say.

After what seems like for ever, he raises his head and frowns at me. “How did they know?” he goes, in a hushed voice. “How could they tell? When it’s so small, how could they tell?”

I swallow. Suddenly I don’t want to laugh any more. “When what’s so small?” I say. There’s a lump in my throat. “When what’s so small?”

“The tumour. It’s less than a centimetre across. How did they even know it was there?”

“What happened?” Finn says.

I’ve come off stage. I’m covered with sweat and my head’s throbbing. “Two weeks,” I mutter. I sit there sweating, rubbing my stomach under my jeans waistband. “Two weeks. Then I come back to a prayer meeting, and I’m going to pass the tumour.”

“Pass the tumour? What the fuck does that mean, ”pass the tumour“?” Then he stops. He’s seen my face. “Oakesy?” he goes, suddenly concerned. “Oakesy, what is it?”

“I dunno,” I mutter, getting unsteadily to my feet. “I dunno. But I want to get out of here. I think I want to speak to a doctor.”

The next ten days are a blur. I go from health professional to health professional. Finn trails along behind me, bemused and worried. I eat up half my aunt’s inheritance trying to get a primary-care practitioner to refer me for a cancer test on the grounds a faith-healer has told me I’m dying. I end up stumping up for a faecal occult blood test in the Presbyterian hospital. The doctor, I remember, is called Leoni. It’s in grey pastel letters on her badge. I remember staring at her name while she reads me the results, my heart banging in my ribcage.

Negative. No tumour. No cancer. Did I really believe what an evangelical preacher told me? She’s got pity in her voice.

Well, that does it for me. If I hated him for what he did to Finn’s ma, now I’ve got big fucking rocks in my head for Pastor Malachi Dove. By the time we go back to the Psychogenic Healing Ministries prayer meeting I want to do one thing: kill him.

This time we’re in Santa Fe. The stage looks the same. Asunción’s in an embroidered baptism shift, and when she spots me in the queue again—almost shaking, I’m so fucking pissed off—she takes my hand and leads me back through the crowd. “Where are we going?” I can see the exit door approaching. “What’s happening?”

She doesn’t answer. She just leads me, with this totally surreal calm, through the back door of the chapel and left through a door into the toilet block.

“Move your bowels, please,” she goes, pointing to one of the toilets.

“What?”

“Move your bowels to complete the treatment.”

I stand there stunned, looking from the bog seat to her then back again. “I can’t just—‘

“I think you’ll find it easier than you expect.”

I stare at her for a long time. I’d like to slap someone right now, but even at eighteen I’m clear enough to see a story when it comes my way. My hands hover on my belt. “What about you? Where are you going to be?”

“I’ve seen it several times before.”

“You’re going to
watch
? You have to be—‘ I break off. She’s looking at me with one of those faces that doesn’t need any words—eyebrows slightly raised, chin tilted down, arms crossed. An SS guard, may as well be. Her mouth is closed in a firm line:
Argue all you want
, it says.
I’m not budging
. I sigh. ”OK, OK. Just stand back a bit, for Christ’s sake.“ I unbutton my trousers, pull down my shorts and sit on the toilet, elbows on my bare knees, hands dangling, looking up at her. ”Well,“ I say, after a while. ”I told you, nothing’s going to happen—’

Before I know it, Asunción’s conjured a wad of toilet paper out of thin air and is thrusting it down under my arse, forcing it up against me. There’s a moment of uncomfortable slithering as I struggle,
‘What the fuck do you think you’re – get your hand out of
—’ and an unfamiliar wet, cold sensation around my arsehole. Then she steps away, pushing her hair triumphantly out of her eyes, the tissue bunched in her fingers.