Touch (1987) (25 page)

Juvenal leaned closer to the bed. "August?"

August opened his eyes.

"Listen, I'm very sorry it happened," Juvenal said. "But you're still full of shit."

He returned to the library set as Howard was introducing another important message from a sponsor.

A girl walked up with a handful of notes, sheets of paper, and laid them on Howard's desk--off-camera now to the millions of viewers watching a detergent salesman getting a housewife to rip her husband's T-shirt in half. Howard got busy with the notes, grinning as he looked through them.

Lynn stared at him.

Juvenal said, "He's right. You can't appear on something like this and hide."

Lynn didn't say anything. Juvenal looked over at August and back to Lynn.

"What's your book say? You don't have to be mad or upset unless you want to."

"Well, I want to," Lynn said.

"He makes it look like we're hiding something."

"You want me to tell him everything, get clinical?"

"I think you ought to use your words instead of his."

"And get whooped off the air?"

"What difference does it make?" Juvenal said. "Is it that important?"

"Isn't it? What people think of you," Lynn said, "God, the difference between what you're really like and the way he makes you look?"

"That's what I mean," Juvenal said, "let's just be ourselves."

"And come off looking like a couple of yo-yos."

He smiled at her. "It's the chance you take. But in the light of eternity, who gives a shit?"

"I'll tell you something," Lynn said, "I really love you."

"Will you do something for me?"

"Sure, what?"

"Go over and sign August's cast."

See how simple it was? Just be yourself.

* * *

Simple maybe, but not easy, listening to Howard Hart.

" 'How . . .' " Howard read with dramatic pauses, " 'do you reconcile religion . . . the claim that God is using this man as His instrument of mercy . . . with raw sex? The two are totally incompatible.' " Howard lowered the sheet of paper to his desk. "Well first, let me remind you, statements made on this program do not necessarily express the opinions of myself or the network. However in this instance I would ask the same question. . . . Lynn? How do you reconcile religion and sex?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Lynn said, "and I don't think you do, either."

"Well, my viewers seem to feel--and I'm referring to the majority of calls we've been getting--that you and Juvenal are talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time. He pretends one thing, but you prove the opposite."

"What have I said?"

"Let me read another one. 'Mr. Hart . . . you approach dangerously close to sacrilege when you submit to us a man of God who openly admits consorting with an unmarried woman.' " Howard looked at Lynn.

She said, "What's the matter with being an unmarried woman?"

"Consorting with, I believe the caller said, a holy man, or a man of God."

"Yes, we consort quite a bit," Lynn said. "We're very big on consorting."

Howard waved a note at her. "A woman called to say she let her eleven-year-old daughter stay up to watch the show, but had to send her off to bed as soon as you began telling about your affair."

"She could've switched to 'Starsky and Hutch,' " Lynn said.

"Another one," Howard said. "Listen to this. 'What's in his mind? What can he be thinking of? To bear the marks of Christ crucified and yet submit his flesh to lust. There is reference in the Bible to the Anti-Christ coming and appearing in the guise of the Lord. Could it be that this man is the direct opposite of what he says he is?' "

"What do I say I am?" Juvenal said.

"It seems to me"--Howard leaned heavily on his desk, studying Juvenal--"in what I've been reading about you, you've not only implied but stated categorically you have some kind of a divine pipeline, God working through you in mysterious ways . . . that is, when you're not messing around with Miss Faulkner here. Would you say that's a fairly accurate appraisal of your claim? Some kind of a messiah?"

"I know what you are," Lynn said. "You're an opinionated little man with a dirty mind and a twenty-nine-dollar hairpiece and if this excuse for a show ever gets more than a ten share I'll kiss your whoop."

Howard grinned, because he loved it and couldn't be insulted or hurt. He said, holding up the handful of notes, "And how about all these people? We've gotten some two hundred calls already and the majority of them, by far, question your illicit relationship--"

"Illicit?" Lynn said.

Juvenal got up from his chair.

"Don't leave without saying good-bye," Howard said.

He wasn't leaving. One of the cameras followed Juvenal across the stage to August Murray's hospital bed.

Lynn and Howard Hart both watched him until Howard said, "Illicit . . . we'll get back to our miracle worker, he's going to check on his friend . . . yes, I call it illicit and it seems hundreds of others do too. An illicit conjugal affair made more promiscuous by the circumstances--"

August could not hear very well or turn to face the voices or get anyone's attention. He was nauseated and his eyes and nose itched. He was miserable. He told himself several times he wanted to die and remembered, in that moment just before he saw Juvenal's face in front of him, that tomorrow was the anniversary of the death of Saint Augustine and he knew something was going to happen to him.

Juvenal said, "August?"

"What?"

"August--"

"What!"

Staring at the face, the eyes, sorrowful eyes, as Juvenal leaned very close, as if to take him in his arms.

August felt strange. Like he was floating, dreaming. He saw Juvenal's face again, the eyes. He saw Juvenal's hands. He could see and feel the fingers--pressing his eyes downward--he could see the knuckles, fists. My God, he was here but his body had no feeling. There was no itching or nausea. There was a sound. The audience? The audience was standing up and sounds were coming from the audience. But the other sound was different and wasn't from people. It was close around him, part of him, and not from out there where everybody was standing, or from the camera with the red-dot light that was moving in toward him. My God--he could feel hands on his body. On his chest. On his ribs.

He could hear. He could move.

He could lower his arms and raise them and lower them. He could swing his legs off the hospital bed.

The body cast, the plaster crucifix, was gone.

Chapter
25

THEY WOULD TALK WITH PAUSES, seeing it again.

Antoinette Baker said, "It was like red paint. You know it? It didn't even look real."

"It was real," Bill Hill said.

"I know it was real, but it didn't look real. That's what Richie said too, at the church. I want to call him, but--you think it's too late?"

"It was real. The way it was coming through his shirt?" Bill Hill said. "You notice that?"

"I mean it didn't look real on the plaster cast, on the white," Antoinette said. "How'd he do that? Take it off."

"How did he do it? He pulled it off. Took it by the neck part--I think that's what he did. You want another drink?"

"Are you kidding? There's our waitress, there."

"If he can do what he did--" Bill Hill said. He signaled the Perfect Blend waitress in her black outfit, holding up two fingers and nodding. "That part was different than at the church."

"It was the same thing," Antoinette said.

"But it was different because you could see it," Bill Hill said. "If he can do what he did--I mean, Jesus, the man had two broken arms, a broken neck, broken ribs--then he can pull off a cast. What difference does it make how? You know how a doctor does it, he uses an electric saw."

"I had a fractured ankle once," Antoinette said. "I slipped and fell off the goddamn bar. Where some beer was spilled."

"You believe it?" Bill Hill said.

"What?" Antoinette said. "Do I believe it? I saw it. Everybody did."

"No, they didn't," Bill Hill said. "They were looking at it--I mean people watching TV--but I'll bet they didn't really see it. Even Howard Hart and he was right there."

"That shitbird," Antoinette said. "He had to've seen it."

"But you notice how he got the camera back on himself right away?"

"I was watching August. I thought he was gonna take off."

August, waving his arms, turning his head, moving his arms up and down, flexing his wrists, standing in his Jockey shorts with the hospital pajama pants down around his ankles; then kicking them off. Jockey shorts, white socks, and sandals.

Howard Hart standing up and then sitting, standing again, waving to get a camera and yelling at Kenny, the floor manager, "Kenny, get the fucking camera over here!" for millions of viewers to hear without a bleep, whoop, or a wipe.

"See, that part happened fast," Bill Hill said. "Even looking right at it--hey, what's going on?"

Howard Hart talking to a camera.

Juvenal standing there a moment, holding out his bloody hands. His coat open, blood showing on the front of his shirt.

Lynn going over to him.

Howard saying, "Come on and sit down. Tell us how you did it."

And Lynn saying, "Your ass, Howard." Still without a whoop or a bleep. "Take your show and eat it."

Lynn and Juvenal walking through the curtain backdrop. Gone.

But blood on the edge of the curtain.

Howard saying, "I did invite Mr. Murray, but without the least suspicion anything had been prearranged. Mr. Murray? Come sit down here. Tell us where you got the cast."

And August Murray saying, "My bones were broken, my body, look"--holding up his arms-- "and now it's whole."

A subdued August walking off the set in his underwear and socks, streaks of blood on his face, on his body, as Howard Hart called after him. Howard sitting down then and saying to the camera, "How'd you like to follow an act like that?" Smiling.

Bill Hill said, "Something was different about him. You don't know him, but something was different. He was a different person."

"August?" Antoinette said. "I talked to him last week, here. He seemed different, I know what you mean. Other people wouldn't know it; but Christ, they saw him waving his broken arms, his healed arms."

"But they listened to Howard," Bill Hill said, "almost another hour. You heard it."

"I couldn't believe it," Antoinette said.

"That's what I'm saying, they were looking at it, all the TV viewers, but what did they see? What, we come to find out, made the biggest impression on them?"

For thirty-eight minutes, not counting commercials and station breaks, Howard Hart took selected phone-ins directly and chatted with members of his network audience. Some wondered, "What was that all about?" And Howard would say, "You saw it. What do you think?" Reply: "I think they ought to work on their act." Or: "The cast was a good touch. What was it, open in back?" But the great majority of the callers, and the telegrams that came in, said things like:

"Where do you find them? Even better than your transvestite interview, a saint who's living in sin. Wow."

"You should have warned everybody you were going to have an X-rated show."

"Your language on the air is in extremely poor taste, unpardonable."

"Next thing you know we'll find out the pope has a girl friend."

"If that isn't sacrilege, the flaunting of sex by a so-called religious person, what is?"

"Her guilt was obvious. You could tell by the brazen way way she showed her legs."

"To disguise promiscuous sex as love was the worst lie of all."

"Again your show condones and glorifies immorality."

"And he calls himself a messiah."

"The shocking fact is not that he's a fraud--he may be sincere--but that he has feet of clay."

"What can God be thinking?"

And so on.

Howard Hart saying to each of his callers, "Hey, it was nice talking at you."

The USBS network received, at final count, 273,484 letters, postcards, wires, and phone calls in regard to the Juvenal telecast, a record number of responses. Still, "Hartline's" Nielsen for that Saturday evening came in a poor fourth behind (1) the CBS Movie, Shark's Treasure, starring Cornel Wilde; (2) NFL Preseason Football, Detroit at Seattle; and (3) a rerun of "Starsky and Hutch."

Bill Hill read about it in the paper and said, "Jesus Christ."

August Murray read about it and said, "So be it."

Antoinette Baker read about it and said, "Wouldn't you know."

Lynn and Juvenal never did read about it. They drove out to L.A., stopping in Nashville and Luckenback, Texas.

The Extras

I. ALL BY ELMORE: THE CRIME NOVELS; THE WESTERNS