Green Eyes

  ‘Praise the Lord!’ They were coming round again, and after a few more repetitions they were held back from the stage by the thinnest of restraints. A man in a seersucker suit stumbled along the aisle, keening, almost a whistling noise like a teakettle about to boil, and fell on all fours, his face agonized, reaching out to Donnell.

  Overwhelmed with disgust, Donnell said, ‘I could sell you sorry fuckers anything, couldn’t I?’

  They weren’t sure they had heard correctly; they looked at each other, puzzled, asking what had been said.

  ‘I could sell you sorry fuckers anything,’ he repeated, ‘as long as it had a bright package and was wrapped around a chewy nugget of fear. I could be your green-eyed king. But it would bore me to be the salvation of cattle like you. Take my advice, though. Don’t buy the crap that’s slung into your faces by two-bit wart-healers!’ He jabbed his cane at Papa Salvatino, who stood open-mouthed in the aisle, a Utter of paper cups and fans and Bibles spreading out from his feet. ‘Find your own answers, your own salvation. If you can’t do that,’ said Donnell, ‘then to Hell with you.’

  He took a faltering step backward. His fascination with the crowd had dulled, and the arrogant confidence inspired by his voice was ebbing. He became aware again of his tenuous position. The crowd was massing back against the tent walls, once more afraid, in turmoil, a clot of darkness sprouting arms and legs, heaving in all directions. Whispers, then a babble, angry shouts.

  ‘Devil!’ someone yelled, and a man countered, ‘He ain’t the Devil! He was curin’ Alice Grimeaux’s boy!’ But someone else, his voice hysterical, screamed ‘Jesus please Jeesus!’

  ‘Yea, I have gazed into the burning eye of Satan and been sore affrighted,’ intoned Papa Salvatino. ‘But the power of my faith commands me. Pray, brothers and sisters! That’s the Devil’s poison: Prayer!’

  The gray-haired usher came up behind him, grabbed a chair, held it overhead and advanced upon the stage while Papa exhorted the crowd. Dark figures began to trickle forward between the chairs, along the aisle. Jocundra stood by the drum kit, pale, her hand poised above the cymbal stand as if she had meant to use it as a weapon, transfixed by the sight of the Army of Our Lord in Louisiana bearing down on them. Donnell felt his groin shriveling. Ordinary men and women were slinking near, gone grim and wolfish, brandishing chairs and bottles, a susurrus of prayer - of ‘Save us sweet Jesuses’ and ‘Merciful Saviors’ - rising from them like an exhaust, ragged on by Papa Salvatino’s blood-and-thunder.

  ‘Pray! Let your prayer crack Satan’s crimson hide! Shine the light of prayer on him ‘til he splits like old leather and the black juice spews from his heart!’

  A meek hope of countering Papa’s verbal attacked sparked in Donnell, but all he could muster was a feeble ‘Ah…’ An old lady, her cane couched spear-fashion, her crepe throat pulsing with prayer, came right behind the gray-haired usher; a tubby kid, no more than seven or eight, clutching his father’s hand and holding a jagged piece of glass, stared at Donnell through slit black eyes; Sister Rita, two hundred pounds of blubbery prayer, cooed to the Savior while she swung her purse around and around like a bolo; the man who had tried to worship Donnell had himself a pocket knife and was talking to the blade, twisting it, practicing the corkscrew thrust he planned to use.

  ‘Let’s fry Satan with the Holy Volts of prayer!’ squalled Papa Salvatino, ‘Let’s set him dancin’ like a rat on a griddle!’

  Donnell backed away, his own sermon about fear mocking him, because fear was gobbling him up from the inside, greedy piranha mouths shredding his rationality. He bumped against Jocundra; her nails dug into his arm.

  ‘God, I’m healed!’ somebody screeched, and two boys sprinted down the aisle. Teenagers. They darted in and out of the crowd, knocked the gray-haired usher spinning, and reeled up to the stage. One, the tallest, a crop of ripe pimples straggling across his cheeks, raised his arms high. ‘Holy Green-eyed Jesus!’ he shouted. ‘You done cured my social disease!’ The other doubled up laughing.

  ‘Goddamn it, Earl!’ A barrel-shaped man in overalls dropped his chair and rushed the boys, but they danced away. He lunged for them again, and they easily evaded him.

  ‘Witness the work of Satan!’ cried Papa. ‘How he turns the child against the father! Child!’ He pointed at the tall boy. ‘Heed not the Anti-Christ or he will bring thee low and set maggots to breed in the jellied meats in thine eyes!’

  ‘Shut up, you big pussy!’ The boy avoided his father’s backhand by a hair and grinned up at Donnell. ‘You done made my hot dog whole!’ he shouted. ‘Praise the fuckin’ Lord!’

  A ripple of laughter from the front of the tent, and a girl yelled, ‘Git him, Earl!’ More laughter as the big man fell, buckling one of the chairs.