Brother Bud handed the letter to Lyle. “Your mamma’s a servant of Jesus, all right,” Brother Bud said, “however low she may have fallen—” When he saw Lyle’s fist clench and rise, he dodged, and quickly added, “—and been redeemed.”
The few words of the letter slid off the page as if Sylvia had composed them in a daze. Lyle read:
Dear Brother Bud and Sister Sis—Keep Lyle Clemens in your fold. Forgive my accursed flesh. In repentance—Sylvia Love.
Accursed flesh? Repentance? A surge of sorrow swept through Lyle. What drove her? Whatever it was, whatever she meant, she wanted him to stay away.
So Lyle agreed to become the Lord’s Cowboy. But he would be only a performer, never a convert, he swore to himself.
During the rehearsal that preceded his appearance on the day that would launch the Write-a-Love-Letter-to-Jesus Campaign, and while Brother Bud and Sister Sis gyrated about him, encouraging him, Lyle decided how he would become inspired to perform on the appointed day. By relying on Rose’s expert instructions.
The Write-a-Love-Letter-to-Jesus campaign opened to a spill-out house of howling, screaming, hurting congregants gathered at the Lord’s Headquarters in Anaheim on a hot, sweaty night.
On the same set that Lyle had seen at the Pentecostal Hall, a motel-rectory, two dozen of God’s Angels swayed and hummed to each word of proclaimed revelation.
Wiping massive tears from her streaked cheeks, Sister Sis and Brother Bud, shaking his head in admiration of God’s wondrous ways, took turns presenting evidence of miraculous intercessions, accompanied by donations from everywhere:
“From a little girl, crippled, skipping merrily along now, a manifestation of gratitude, a few pennies, only that, but her faith will draw millions—”
“From a man blind for ten years, able to see the light now, a donation of all he has kept hidden—”
“From a sinner drowning in alcohol—”
“From a fornicator lost in lust—”
“From a man deaf in both ears—”
“From a woman crippled when—”
“From—”
“From—”
“From—”
“From—”
“Write your Love Letter to Jesus, enclose your heavenly donations, and we’ll deliver to Him by prayer’s fastest post,” Sister Sis begged.
“Give as much as you love him,” Brother Bud pleaded.
Lyle heard the litany of names and amounts of donations, of cures and donations, of prayers and donations—an avalanche of pain and contributions.
“To rouse the living spirit, here is—!”
A swell of hallelujahs from the chorus shoved away the sweet trilling of God’s Little Angels aflutter in feathery tissue wings and proclaimed the entrance of—
“The Loooooooord’s Cooooooowboyyyyyy!”
Decked in new jeans fitted by the Lord’s seamstress, a Western shirt—an extra button hurriedly opened by Sister Sis—a cowboy hat, which was intended to fall off (“If the Lord inspires you to,” Sister had suggested, “send it spinnin’ out at the folks to grab and cherish)”—and wearing his own cherished Tony Lama boots, Lyle walked to the center of the set.
Now what?
He strummed a few uncertain, quivery notes on his guitar. How to start? Oh, wait. Would they be watching, somehow? Maria? And Clarita—and Sylvia?
He sang to Maria:
I will love you always and I’m not your brother—
God’s Little Angels warbled: “Yea, Lord, I’m your brotherrr, I’m your sisterrrrr …”
Lyle changed the song quickly. He formed a hurried message to Sylvia:
With all my heart and soul, Sylvia, I pray that you’re okay—
“Yea, hope is the heart’s soul, Savior!” the chorus chimed.
Lyle was stumped. What to rhyme with Clarita?
“Arouse them in the spirit, send them surging to Heaven!” Sister Sis pled anxiously, over jiggles of her tambourine.
“Do your damn preacher dance!” Brother Bud exhorted.
Go at it, cowboy! Rose encouraged.
Sure! All right!
He strummed his guitar and sang improvised words, and then abandoned the words and strummed and strummed and did the preacher-strut—and hopped back, forward, forward, back, forward, forward, forward, and he thought of sweet Rose and then thought of Maria, naked that afternoon … her legs … white flesh interrupted only by the small stark triangle sheltering the pink opening … her breasts … eager nipples … Rose! … lush flesh … scarlet lips … gasps … thought of … that woman in the pool lobby … one leg crooked over the other, tiny sequiny hairs peeking out, tempting … glistening—and his body responded just as it had with Maria—(Don’t leave me out, cowboy!)—and Rose, and like the first time he sang in Rio Escondido, and when his excitement became too prominent he hopped, hopped, hopped, plucking his guitar, disguising his arousal, wiggling sideways—forcing it down but not too much—to gales of approbation, howls of approbation, and the congregation screamed with joy, and some of the afflicted hopped in the aisles, and the panting congregation swayed to the rhythm of the Lord’s Cowboy, who was sweating, so hot, oh, Lord—so hot that his shirt clung to his chest with perspiration, where Maria had kissed him and he had kissed her breasts and kissed Rose’s and Maria’s, but not the red-haired woman’s—what was her name? … naked breasts, spread white thighs, parted lips—(Oh, lordee, yes, cowboy, now thrust, and riiiiiiide on!)—and his erection threatened to bust through, and the congregation went wild and hollered, “Yea, Lord, come to me, come to us, come, O Lord, come, come!”—and their bodies strained toward him, their hands grasping high, as he bumped, ground, pumped—and a woman in the audience screamed, “Oh, Lord!” and fainted in the aisle, knocked dead in the spirit, while a swelling chorus of hallelujahs paused only to allow God’s Little Angels, feathers quivering, to be heard trilling sweetly.
“The spirit has grabbed the Lord’s Cowboy!”
On the second day of the Write-a-Love-Letter-to-Jesus Campaign, Brother Bud confided to the congregants, to explain Lyle’s odd words: “Sometimes the Lord’s Cowboy lapses into tongues, words God dictates to him right on the spot, words you may not understand but God does, words that cause Him to send down His brightest light upon you.”
Clasping her hands soulfully, Sister Sis explained, “He sings songs only he hears, songs angels sing to him, and that he imparts to you through God’s bounty.”
“Gaahhd’s Bouuuuuunteeee!” The chorus swelled in adulation as Lyle entered, his guitar over his shoulder to be whipped forward in one moment with a thrust forward of his hips.
The Lord’s Cowboy had the spirit, for sure, everyone said—hallelujah, yea, Lord—and, yea, look at him, willya?—the Lord’s Cowboy strutting to rouse the dead and the living, doin’ the preacher-strut like God and the angels intended—back, back, hop, hop, back, hop, hop, whip around, whip around, arch, toss, bump and grind and toss and hop and whip around—and don’t you know that the holy spirit surged through the Lord’s Cowboy like electricity oozing out into the congregation.
Beyond the Lord’s Headquarters, the devoted audience watching on television gathered dimes and quarters and bills and life’s savings and sat down to write Love Letters to Jesus, and marked them “Personal.”
“Leave it there!” Mrs. Renquist ordered Mr. Renquist, who had been randomly aiming his remote at the giant television screen on which they were preparing to watch a video of Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest.
“You got religion suddenly, eh?” Mr. Renquist was bold enough to chide. “That’s that crazy evangelical station—” He double-blinked at the screen. “Wow, what a fuckin’ hunk.”
Mrs. Renquist flinched, but her eyes remained on the screen, where, against a backdrop meant to look like the interior of a rectory, a young cowboy was warbling and prancing and hopping on the television screen.
“I bet he could shove a mean fuck!” Mr. Renquist said.
Mrs. Renquist recoiled as if shot. “Why must you reduce everything? Clearly, that young man has a prominent presence; why can’t you say that?”
“That kid ain’t dancin’ for the Lord,” Mr. Renquist continued intrepidly. “He’s dancing like he’s fucking, eh?”
Mrs. Renquist pressed both her hands before her mouth as if to smother two screams, at the coarseness of his words and at the despised interjection. All she could utter was, “Why—?”
“Young, fresh, sexy, a real hunk, and unless he’s stuffed in the balls, he’s sure got a big dong. Christ, has he got a hard-on under those tight pants? Look! Hey, that’s why he’s hopping up and down cause he wants to shake the hard-on down! Take a gander at his balls, eh? If it isn’t stuffed, then he’s hung like a fuckin’ horse.”
“Something new on the Internet,” Mrs. Renquist thought aloud.
“With him? No way you could get him away from those born-again fucks; you’d have to fuckin’ trick him into something—”
“Yes! Trick him!” Mrs. Renquist agreed, before Mr. Renquist’s blatant vulgarity struck at her temples like two thieves in the night, causing her to utter tiny protesting sobs.
Liz Smith
The Return of a Star
Los Angeles.—On my visit to the other Coast, I spotted Rusty Blake and gorgeous Tarah Worth at Beverly Hills’ celebrity-studded restaurant, Spago’s. Astonishing as it may seem, Tarah looks even younger than Blake, who is—he claims—not yet 30. During a tableside chat, Tarah, as charming as she is beautiful, assured me that her “skin is still virgin skin, unviolated by the surgeon’s knife.” Hollywood makeup experts will have a hard time aging her for the role of Helen Lawson, although I learned it’s being adjusted just for her. “I don’t mind playing an older woman of 39,” Tarah confided, “because it is a fabulous role, and I am an actress.” Spoken like a trouper! I cannot imagine who else would play the choicest role in the sequel to the great classic Valley of the Dolls by my good, departed friend, the immortal Jacqueline Susann. Hollywood, take notice! I predict that this role will bring Tarah Worth the Academy Award she deserves. Not only is she abundantly talented, she is also one of the most beautiful women in the world, with exquisite skin, eyes that tilt. She is at once an All-American beauty and an exotic, mysterious woman.
Her body is unbelievable, and it would be at any age. But for a woman of 37 … 36 … 35 … 33 … 30, she is miraculous. And that red hair! Really, she is breathtaking!
“Exactly like that!” Tarah said aloud. She sat in her living room penning the column she was sure Liz Smith would write—of course Liz would write it in her own inimitable way, imagination could not match that—about her evening out—tonight—at Spago’s with Rusty Blake!
What was all that shrieking? Oh, yes, those crazy evangelists on the television screen. She had landed on one absently when she had begun to pen the imaginary column.
Was that him? The young man by the motel pool. She put on the glasses she never wore in public. It was him—and he was not an actor—yes, it was that sexy cowboy who had run away so strangely after standing there with a hard-on. What to make of the fact that he had now appeared in her life twice? How was he connected to Return to the Valley of the Dolls? Call Riva, her psychic advisor? Things had to happen in threes, to achieve powerful significance; Riva had taught her that.
Tarah stood up, gathering about her the filmy negligee that erased any blemish—not that there was any—on her body. It was noontime but she liked to remain in her “bedclothes,” luxuriating glamorously. Now! Now she must decide what to wear for this staggeringly important night! Should she consult her horoscope? No, it was always malicious, always warning. Still …
She took her chart out of the drawer. Today: “A tall, handsome man is headed your way and may change your life—for good or ill.”
A tall, handsome man … the cowboy! Again! Still: “… for good or ill.” Irritated by the astrologer’s nasty addition, Tarah took a pen and blotted out the last two words of that entry in her chart.
Lyle felt ashamed, couldn’t stand himself, thought every day of fleeing, tossed and turned in the motel bed—occasionally looking out at the pool to see if maybe the woman he had seen there might be out there, even if it was night. He felt even more ashamed when he fell asleep and dreamt that an angry Clarita was teaching him a lesson that he couldn’t hear, and then Sister Matilda came in on it scolding him for making sounds in the Lords Headquarter’s—“just sounds, don’t mean anything.” But none of that was anything like the shame he felt when, later that day, Brother Bud and Sister Sis presented him with a big check, more money than he had ever imagined—“just the beginning, Lord’s Cowboy, to show how much the Lord appreciates you, boy.”
He felt so ashamed that he thought—again—of fleeing—and then wondered whether he should await some further indication of why Sister Matilda wanted him to Stay put.
Too, there was this. He sure could use all that money.
He walked into the bank named on the check and waited for the prettiest girl teller, who had spotted him when he walked in.
“Can’t cash that much,” she said, in a winky voice. “You’d want to open an account with it, wouldn’t you, cowboy?”
Lyle shook his head. No use explaining he wasn’t a cowboy. “I guess,” Lyle said.
The pretty girl said wistfully, “I’ll have to call one of the managers so you won’t have to wait, and he’ll open the account for you. Mr. Clarence!” she called out.
A staid serious man responded to her call. He led Lyle to his desk in a small cubicle. “Thomas Clarence here,” he introduced himself. “This is a lot of money, young man. Of course, I know the source. Good Christian folk, Brother Bud and Sister Sis, upright folk, decent folk, honest folk, beacons of light within all the darkness of sin and evil, God praise them in these times of liberal upheaval. We have the honor of having them bank with us. That makes me think of this establishment as the Lord’s Bank. I’ll need to have a driver’s license.”
“Ride a horse?” the man broke his staid demeanor with a tiny chuckle, then became serious again. “I need some kind of identification.” He looked at the paper Lyle had handed him. “A birth certificate?”
“It’s mine,” Lyle said.
The man put on glasses, scrutinized it. “Father—”
“Unknown,” Lyle said without hesitation. “He was a goddamned son of a bitch who left my mother when I was about to be born, and so she just as soon not have his name on that paper; but it’s me.”
Even so, Thomas Clarence—frowning at the young man’s language—said he’d have to verify the check with the “righteous Bud and Sis,” whom he called “on their private line, always in touch in case of urgency.” Obviously on familiar terms with them, he chuckled and said, “God bless you” several times, and added, off the telephone, to Lyle: “I like working for good folks, honorable folks, following their righteous instructions, never question.” He spoke into the telephone again: “Ummm, yes, of course, everything’s being handled right and according to your wise instructions.”
His smile told Lyle they had stood by the check. “They tell me you’re a follower of the Word, and their word is good enough for me,” said Mr. Thomas Clarence. “I don’t question the righteous,” he asserted. He proposed a bank account, in the Ministry’s name, of course, but for him to draw on. “That way—”
Too complicated. “I’ll take the cash,” Lyle said.
“Lots of money to carry around with you,” Mr. Clarence cautioned.
Lyle opted for the cash.
Thomas Clarence looked at him with steely eyes. “I would strongly suggest that you—”
With a wide smile, Lyle asked for the cash, please.
“Maybe now you’ll buy yourself a horse!” Mr. Clarence snapped.
As he walked out of the bank with a lot of cash and two money orders—for Sylvia and Clarita—Lyle told himself that when he found Sister Matilda—and he would, he would—he would explain why he took the tainted money. But what if what Brother Bud and Sister Sis had said about her absconding with funds was true?
Dodging behind a building and looking around to make sure nobody saw, he stuffed the bills into his Tony Lama boots.
Lyle was through, wondering, as always, whether he should bow.
No need to wonder about anything further because—
Brother Dan pounced onto the stage and landed with a loud thud!
He was a ferocious evangelist who had traveled all the way from Georgia for tonight’s healings, a star evangelist who had performed more cures and exorcisms than even he, himself, in his humility, remembered. A fierce man whose hair seemed to have been shaken about by a fierce wind, his stocky body agile, he screamed out his message in a flood of words:
“The Lord’s aimin’ massive wrath right now at evil souls wanderin’ the earth, but he’s givin’ members of this congregation a last chance to placate His ire, be granted a passport to Heaven! Give your hearts, give your bounty. Give!”
Out came new donations and letters carried in boxes by God’s Little Angels, cardboard wire crowns sprinkled with tinsel.
“These come from folks cravin’ salvation, freedom from pain, and they send all they have, and in return what do they get? A bushel of miracles!” Brother Dan thrust his hands up and shook his head at the wonder of God’s wrath and bounty.
Cries came up, echoing, “Grant us miracles.”
Brother Dan lowered his voice, seemed about to kneel, sprang up. “Pour out of your heart, pour out of your pockets. Be a soldier of the Lord, wage his war, donate your ammunition to fight the Old Devil. Give, give, give!”
“Praise God!” … “Lord protect us!” … “Grant us miracles and a passport to Heaven.”
They squirmed, they trembled, they grasped at the air, they cried, they laughed, they sprang into the aisles, they quivered and fainted and babbled in tongues, they danced, they howled, they reached for heaven, they sank crouching on the floor.
Brother Dan spread his hands, inviting. “Come forth to be purified of demons, to cast away ole Satan. That will be done not by my humble hands—I am but a lowly servant of the Lord—it will be done by Jesus, through these hands.” He scattered the invisible bounty in his hands. … “Come forth now and cleanse yourselves, be slain in the spirit of the Lord.” He stretched beneficent hands to those already making their way toward him.
Lyle watched the parade of the pained. What to think about God? How did He allow this suffering—and, then, allow it to be used, abused, this procession of the trembling, crawling, hobbling, screaming to be cured, to be struck on the forehead and healed—for how long? It was sad, it was frightening. He would leave this fraudulent circus he had performed in, right now!
“Just received this!” Sister Sis ran breathlessly sobbing to Brother Dan. “Special delivery!” She was carrying a jar. “Sent to us by saintly woman.”
Brother Bud put a reassuring hand on her quivering shoulders, took the fat glass from her, and ceremoniously handed it to Brother Dan.
“Doctors said it couldn’t be removed,” Sister Sis wept, “told the poor woman she would die in a month, and she—“She stopped, racked with sobs.
“It was during your pleadings with Jesus, Brother Dan,” Brother Bud managed to continue, “that the poor soul was able to shed it, just tore it out of her bosom. And here it is: The deadly tumor!”
Brother Bud held the jar up—up high like a trophy—before the congregation.
Gasps! Oohs! Ahs! “A miracle!” Wild applause!
Sister Sis squeezed out words, “She sent this to us in a humble jar as proof of God’s mercy, and she sent all her funds to help bring His miracles to others.”
Brother Dan inhaled, exhaled—loudly. He roared: “Praise God!”
Screams! Delirium!
An attendant took the jar from Brother Dan, who bowed in reverence. As the attendant passed Lyle, Lyle saw the dark mass inside it, bloody streaks of red creeping through a dark mass. The jelly beans he’d seen that first day when Brother Bud and Sister Sis had shushed the man and woman carrying them? Jelly beans squashed and put into a gluey liquid? Yes!—and the jar sent to him in the motel room as a reminder confirmed that.
His legs and feet were returning him to the stage, to expose, to—He stopped when he heard Brother Dan’s next words.
“—a ho-mo-sex-u-al”—Brother Dan masticated each syllable—“driven by lust for his own sex, cast into the pit of perdition, and staggering to find his way here, to be driven of his sins, his base desires, his unnatural longings.”
“Make me clean!” A young man, slender, knelt before the ferocious preacher.
“He has traveled for miles to be saved,” Sister Sis emphasized for the congregation that waited, spellbound now, enthralled by something more, something else, something strange and thrilling.
Brother Dan glared down at the kneeling boy. “—a child who has strayed into Satan’s perversions!” he screamed.
The boy held his hands pressed together under his chin, his face raised, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted. “Cleanse me!”
Lyle recognized the boy. Raul from Rio Escondido.