Winter was over.
All us pickers got a day off.
No work. It was Sunday. And then Coo Coo woke me up to say he had news. “Christers are coming.”
“Who?”
“Oh, some Holy Joe and his troop of singing sisters. Bible thumpers.”
“Do we gotta go?”
Coo Coo shook his head. “No, we don’t got to. But maybe it’ll benefit us both to attend. You never know what the religious folks will dish out.”
“Food?”
“Maybe.”
“We could use some clothes.”
Coo Coo looked down at his pantlegs where his dirty knees were poking through into the weather. “Reckon we could.”
“Do I have to wash?” I asked the Coo Coo as we stepped off the bus.
“Naw,” he said. “Don’t give it a bother. Sometimes, if these Sky Hawkers see ya tore and dirty, they break out their better loot.”
“How come they’re here today?”
Ahead of us, a few pickies had already arrived. People were singing a song … about God. It was so easy to tell, even from a distance, which was which in the group.
First off, our bunch was quiet. Pickers were sort of part naked. Gaps in everything they had on. “A picker’s shirt,” Coo Coo had said more’n once, “is a stink with holes in it.”
Holy Joe and his followers were all dressed in black. The leader had a black hat, a black string tie, a long black hammerclaw coat, black pants. The ladies were in black bonnets and dresses to match.
What was so surprising was that every single one of them Christers wore shoes.
Black shoes.
After the song, the Holy people fetched out some shiny brass gadgets and blew into them and assembled one heck of a racket. They even pounded on a big drum, a little drum, and a jingling tambourine. The people blowed really hard until their faces sweated, and their cheeks blushed red.
Their musical piece final managed to blow itself out like a blast of bean gas.
The Holy Joe stood on a box.
“Brothers and Sisters,” he began, holding a big book. It was, to nobody’s surprise, black. “If you please, allow me to introduce myself to you, my congregated friends.”
He smiled a warm smile.
Looking at Holy Joe, I saw a man who was maybe fifty years old, short and stout, and very clean pink hands. Even his fingernails. His black shoes were shinier than a darky’s ass.
“My name,” he telled us, “is John Patrick Mulligan. I’m called Our Father J. P. Mulligan, and I am a duly sworn Golden Prophet of Salvation. We, in our blessed church, one that I am proud to confess that I personally founded, have come to save you. Because, today is not just another ordinary Sunday. No, today is … Easter Sunday.”
Yanking a hanky rag from his pants pocket, Our Father Mulligan wiped his ruddy face. His hanky weren’t black! It was whiter than virtue.
“Now, then,” the man said, “perchance you good parishioners are wondering just how I happened to have my title: Our Father. I shall explain. It is an honorary bestowal, and my title was bestowed upon me …”
Leaning down to my ear, Coo Coo whispered, “Yeah, it was bestowed upon me by me. He thunk it up my hisself.”
I let that one sink in.
“We are here assembled,” the man in black said, “so that I may preach at you … I meant to say preach for you … on the fatal subject”—he pointed directly at Coo Coo—“of SIN.”
Coo Coo flinched.
Yet he didn’t bolt. He held ground.
“Sin,” repeated Our Father, “sneaks up upon us in many vile and contemptuous disguises. Many false faces.”
“Coo Coo,” I whispered low, “when is Holy Joe fixing to pass out stuff? I’m so hungry that my stomach is emptier than that big old drum that they hit with a potato masher.”
“Later,” he answered. “They always torture you first.”
“Sin,” shouted Our Father John, jabbing a chubby finger at the sky, “is indeed the foul enemy of us all. You and I are brethren. We both toil and sweat in the vineyards of righteousness, for the glory of Jehovah.” He glanced at the ladies.
“Amen,” mumbled the black-dressed Sisters, sounding like it was their duty to chime in, on command.
The Holy Joe looked pleased, for a breath, and nodded a brief approval at the ladies and their response.
“Is that the end?” I asked Coo Coo as we stood side by side under a oak tree. “Do you think he’ll pass out eats right now?”
“Nope.”
“He won’t?”
“No, he’ll keep on abusing our ears until we pass out.”
Coo was right.
Our Father kept right on.
Sin seemed to be his favorite subject, and as far as I could understand, the Holy Joe was against it. He said that all of us were sinners. Yet we were lucky blessed with souls, even the lowest among us. As he said so, he looked right at me.
“Fire!” shouted Holy Joe.
Looking around, I couldn’t spot any flames or smoke, and so I turned back to the sermon.
“Fire,” repeated Our Father, “is what is eternally burning down in Hell … and that is your destination on the Road of Sin. The scorching inferno to consume a wayward soul. But,” he paused to gasp, “there is another road. The upward stairs. Our church … the Golden Prophets of Salvation.”
Again he pointed at Coo Coo.
“Brother,” he asked him, “have you been saved?”
Coo Coo smiled and nodded at Father.
“Twenty-three times,” he said.
Holding his Bible high in the air, he fired another blast at Coo Coo. “Do not blaspheme,” he warned. “Your spirit is in peril, Brother. Your heart is empty.”
“Not near as empty,” Coo Coo whispered to me, “as my paunch or my pocketbook.”
“Empty as me,” I said.
“It says clearly in the Holy Bible,” ranted the Holy Joe, “that it is more blessed to give than to receive. The Road to Heaven is for the giving, the givers, those who freely and unselfishly give.”
“Amen,” droned the Sisters.
One of the Sisters was sort of young. My size. She winked at me, and I thought that she slightly looked like Essie May Cooter, only a little more to the plump side.
My stomach growled.
“Golly,” I muttered to Coo Coo, whose belly had hardly been church-mouse quiet, “is that Our Father gent going to pass out stuff, or not?”
“Hold patient, Arly. He’ll git to the key important part right quicksome, as you’ll soon discover.”
I did soon discover it.
Coo Coo had been correct. The Holy Joe so widely acclaimed as Our Father final did get around to pass something out. And, when it happened, it certain come as a surprise to me, to Coo Coo, and all the rest of the congregation.
For the rest of my days on earth, I’d never forget Our Father John Patrick Mulligan and his sisters. I’d always remember that religious group as the Golden Profits.
Yes, they passed something out that Easter.
They passed Our Father’s hat.