And on the third night …
The third night, I had to wrestle with my heaven and my hell.
The telling.
I moped around the rest of that afternoon, after Rufus rode off. The Preacher stayed in the drugstore the longest time. When I stuck my face to the window to see what he was doing, I saw that Darlene, standing with her apron in her hand, had him cornered, and I gave up on him coming out anytime soon. Girls never shut up once they’ve got somebody cornered.
So I moped. I felt this awful ton of rock in my stomach and seemed like nothing in the world could knock it out.
Except him.
I knew I’d feel worse if I hung around the drugstore waiting for Darlene to let him go, so I rode around town, thinking and moping. I remembered how I used to look for Pop when I went around town, watching for a phone truck, watching for a lineman up a ladder. From the time I was big enough to look up at the sky, I loved to see Pop up there at the top of the telephone poles. I thought he had a power nobody else had, being up there. And the older I got, and the more I knew about electrical stuff zapping you right out of this world, the more I saw Pop as a brave man.
I wanted to be like him.
He told me things, back then. I guess I was six or seven. He told me he wanted to be one of those doctors who go off in the jungle to heal ignorant people. He said he never was smart enough to be anything but a lineman, but that didn’t change what he would have been if he’d had a choice.
He’d tell me that, and I’d wonder why on earth he’d want to be a jungle doctor when he could climb higher and risk more than anybody I knew.
That was Pop and me, when I was little.
But the summer I was thirteen, the day I biked and moped all by myself, I didn’t look for a lineman. Or for a best friend.
I didn’t want anything but to be with the Man. And I couldn’t wait for night to come. The dark and the heat and the tears and the Man.
Mother cooked ham for supper, but I ate so fast I hardly tasted it. Dinner was set late, and the revival time was coming up, and I didn’t want to miss a minute of it. Walk me through all the Jungle Gardenia in the world: I’d be there.
So supper was fast. Pop discussed chain-link fences with Mother, and there wasn’t that gloominess settling in like the night before. I could forget them and eat, then run like the devil.
I knew I had him only two more nights. I knew Preacher Man would be moving on after the next revival night, and I was afraid that my heart would never again explode with the spirit of the Lord. Never again would he look at me like he knew me inside out, blood and bones and cells and soul. Never again would anybody look at me and know how I felt, on fire with the Lord.
Two more nights.
I got there a half-hour early and already the place was nearly full. I found a seat close to the front, and when I sat down, I could feel my heart pounding thump-thump-thump, so hard and loud, I was nearly embarrassed thinking somebody might hear it.
The choir was still in back, getting on their robes, so I had a chance to think.
I looked up at the empty pulpit. And I pictured myself walking into it. Peter Cassidy, Reverend Peter Cassidy, come to preach.
I would look into everybody’s face. I wouldn’t miss one. I would stare into everybody’s eyes and I would tell the people to like the Lord. I would point to that big picture of Him behind me and I’d have them liking Him. I’d have them wanting to be saved so they could get into heaven to sit with Him and hear His stories and know that there really is somebody in the world who is perfect. Who loves them always. Who never changes.
“Reverend Cassidy, you have a way. You have a gift.”
Then I blushed. I’m no preacher, I thought. It’s not in me. Nobody’s going to faint from the glory into my arms.
I couldn’t even convince Rufus. I’m no preacher.
I stopped thinking about it and just sat thumbing through the hymnal, silently singing all those familiar words to myself. It was nice to be in a place where I felt so close with everything.
Eventually Joanie Fulton came out and started up the organ. The choir began filing in, mostly gray-haired men and women. Seemed nobody young wanted to sing with them. I figured I wouldn’t want to either.
The minutes dragged and my heart nearly pumped itself right out of my body while I waited for the Man.
And then he came.
And like before, he had us all. Came out, and before anybody knew it, he had us so close to him it almost hurt. Maybe that’s why the tears came. It hurt so much and felt so good all at the same time.
People started going up as soon as he said, “Come.” They went up there to him, and you could see they didn’t care about a thing but having him touch them. My eyes were so full, I kept having to use my sleeve to clear them out. People in my pew were going up there, and I wanted to go, too. Like always, I wanted to go.
Then, when I was stepping out into the aisle so somebody could get by me and go up, I looked toward the back of the church and saw Mother.
She was near the very back, sitting on the far edge of a pew, like someone who has to leave early. I stood there in the aisle, and with all those people and all that crying, and with my eyes so filled up, still I saw her. And I believe she saw me.
I say I believe, because our eyes met only for a second. Then more people came by me—Elton Fletcher raising his arms up to heaven, Fleda Lilly holding a handkerchief to her face—and by the time they had passed me, she was gone.
Mother. For a few moments, I felt like I did when I was a little child. When she would leave me home with Pop or Granny and go out the door, and I’d say, “Mother, don’t leave me!” The door would close and I’d cry and cry and cry.
Mother, don’t leave me.
Why was she there? Was it really her? I never learned. I was afraid to ask her. And later, I was embarrassed by the thought of what she must have seen on my face.
I loved the Preacher Man. She was my mother and she would have seen it. She would have known I loved him.
So when I couldn’t find her in the crowd, I turned back to the pulpit, back to the Man, and I said “Amen” when he said it. I said “Hallelujah” when he said it. My body shook with joy and emotion beyond telling as I watched him. It shook with pain.
At the end of the meeting, when the organ and the choir and the Preacher were silent, I was spent. Worn out. I was in a daze.
So when I walked out into the night air and, still trembling, got my feet moving toward home, I hardly had the energy to be surprised when he stopped me.
“Pete?” He put his hand on my shoulder.
I turned sort of slow and looked at him. We were on the sidewalk. The last of the cars were pulling out. Most everyone who was walking home had already gone.
“Huh?” Then I realized who it was. The happiness just broke loose over my whole body, and I smiled at him.
“Hi, Reverend.”
He sighed and smiled, almost sadly, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped his face with it.
“A good evening of salvation,” he said.
“Sure was.” I stood fidgeting with my hands.
“I’m worn out,” he said quietly, and I nodded my head at him in sympathy.
“I’m going to walk down to the pop machine at the filling station,” he said, stuffing the handkerchief in the pocket of his jacket. “You want a pop?”
I said okay, and we started down the street together. Like I said, I was so tired I could hardly muster up the nervousness I usually felt when I was around him. So I was quiet and content, and we walked.
We got to the machine about six blocks down and took our pops to sit on the stone wall alongside the station.
He took the longest drink of root beer I ever saw a grown man take. Then he wiped his mouth, stood up, took off his jacket, and sat back down.
Without his suit jacket he was like a stranger. For a minute I looked at him in his shirt, and he was nearly like any other man. That jacket did cast its spell.
“I’m worn out, Pete,” he said softly.
I nodded my head again.
He looked up at the stars.
“When I was a boy,” he said, “I had a friend named Johnny Mitchell. He’d been in the navy and he had tattoos and he brushed his teeth with baking soda.”
I nodded, wondering where the Preacher was heading.
“Johnny never married. He lived with his folks and he drove coal trucks, wrecking one every now and then.
“And Johnny loved me. He bought me cheese-burgers and Juicy Fruit and he taught me how to swing on a grapevine.”
Preacher looked at me with a sad smile.
“He drove a Rambler and tailgated everybody, and he cussed all the time.” The Preacher took a deep breath. “But because of him, I grew up thinking I was safe.”
Then the Preacher was quiet again. I didn’t know what to say. But what came out was, “I always want to feel safe, too.”
And I guess it was the right thing to say, because he looked at me like I’d said something important.
“I was always different, Pete,” he said. “Not in an obvious way. But I knew I was different.
“When I was sixteen there was this boy in our high school. From Russia.”
“Yes, sure enough. His name was Varas. He had owl eyes and round glasses and knew math like nobody’s business. He played jazz saxophone and told great stories. But since nobody could pronounce his last name and since his family wasn’t Christian and since he was just too smart for us all to keep up with, Varas was mostly alone.”
I shook my head in sympathy for Varas and started to say he sounded like a great guy, but then the Preacher added, “Like me.”
“You?” I asked. At first I didn’t see his connection.
He smiled. “Alone.”
He looked up at the sky. “Jesus Christ was fortunate. He had companions, disciples. Somebody to talk to.”
When he said that, the night changed for me. It wasn’t happy anymore; it was sad. And I knew: Preacher Man wasn’t perfect. He was lonely.
Again I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there, wondering how to make somebody like him feel better.
Then he spoke. “But I have my rewards.” And as his face lit up, my heart sort of lit up with it.
“I’ve met more people and seen more things than most men twice my age, Pete. I’ve been able to show people what’s real and what isn’t.
“And at night,” he said, “at night, after I’ve been preaching, I lie down and my soul is ready to explode, the joy is so powerful in me.”
He got up and started pacing around, the way he did at the revival meetings. He wasn’t looking at me anymore. It was like he was talking to a big crowd of people, and his talk got faster and faster.
“I think about the faces I’ve held in my hands and the people who have fallen to their knees before me, and I feel like I know Jesus Christ, like I am nearly Jesus Christ himself!”
His face was getting broad with his joy, and I felt it, sitting next to him. Felt it like a current of electricity. I trembled inside, it was so strong.
“And you, Pete,” he said, stopping in front of me. “I see it in you. I see the preacher in you, and it stirs me up inside.”
“Me?” I said, pointing to myself.
“I see it in your face, Peter.” He started pacing again, moving away from me. “You are busting out with the power of the Lord, and you don’t even know it. You have a power to do things, to help. You could make the people fall down on their knees. You could …”
And he stopped, his back to me and his face looking down the road that led out of town. He stopped dead, and the silence was tight and heavy while he stood there, looking out toward something I couldn’t see. And just when I was getting nervous and ready to make a sound, the Man turned around and looked straight at me. He looked at me and quietly said, “If only you could come.”
“Come where?” I said.
“Into the world. See what I see. Save the lives of thousands of people.”
He came back and sat down beside me, his head close to mine.
“I hate to see you wasted, Peter. A boy touched by the hand of God is a boy apart. Look at those around you—your parents, your friends. Are they not blind to the light that shines in you?”
He paused, then said more softly, “Are they not strangers to you?”
And the tears wanted to pour. I started to feel them when he said that, and they wanted to pour. But I held back.
He touched my arm and I could feel the heat of his hand through my sleeve.
“People will die and burn in hell if not for me, Peter.” His eyes were wide and wet in the glow cast by the streetlamp. I couldn’t look away.
“You can come with me and help me save them, Peter,” he whispered. “You can come.”
The tears stung, my heart pounded, my hands sweated, and my mind searched for reasons to say no.
“Will you come?” he whispered.