Mystery Walk

follow the man who directs you over there.' He held up a bucket that was filling up with change. 'Quarter to park, please.'

'Quarter? But . . . this is a public field, ain't it?'

The man shook his bucket so the coins jingled. 'Not tonight, fella.'

John found lint and fifteen cents in his pockets. Ramona opened her change purse, took out a dime, and gave it to him. They drove on, following the impatient swing of flashlights. They had to park at the far edge of the field, between two school buses; by the time they'd walked the fifty yards to the tent's entranceway their carefully prepared clothes were scaled with dust. John took Billy's hand as they stepped across the threshold.

The interior held more people than John had ever seen gathered together in his life, and still the folks were coming in, rapidly filling up the wooden folding chairs that faced a large raised platform. Golden light streamed from shaded bulbs hanging in rows from the tent's high ceiling. Over the excited but restrained murmur of voices, a church organ played 'The Old Rugged Cross' through two mighty speakers, one on each side of the platform. An American flag and the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy were suspended above the platform, the Old Glory just slightly higher than its rival. A bow-tied usher in a white coat came back to help them find a seat, and John said they wanted to sit as close to the front as they could.

As they walked along the narrow aisle, John was uneasily aware of the stares that were directed toward Ramona. Whispers skittered back and forth, and a whole row of elderly matrons who comprised the Dorcas Society stopped their sewing to stare and gossip. John felt his face redden and wished he'd never insisted she come with them; he'd never expected her to give in, anyway. He glanced back at Ramona and saw she was walking with her spine stiff and straight. He found three chairs together—not nearly as close to the platform as he'd wanted to get, but he couldn't take the gauntlet of stares and whispers any longer—and he said to the usher, 'Right here's fine.'

At five minutes before seven there wasn't enough room in the tent for a thin stick. The air was heavy and humid, though the ushers had rolled up the tent's sides so a breeze could circulate; paper fans rustled like hummingbirds' wings. The organ played 'In the Garden' and then, promptly at seven, a dark-haired man in a blue suit came out from behind a curtain at the right of the platform and climbed several steps up to it, where a podium and microphone had been set up. He tapped the mike to make sure it was working and then surveyed the crowd with a gleeful, toothy smile. 'How do!' he said loudly. He introduced himself as Archie Kane, minister of the Freewill Baptist Church in Fayette, and talked about how glad he was to see such a good response, as a choir in yellow robes assembled on the platform behind him. Billy, who'd been growing a little restless in the stifling heat, was excited again because he liked music.

Kane led the choir and assembly in several hymns, then a long rambling prayer punctuated by people calling out hallelujahs. Kane grinned, dabbed at his sweating face with a handkerchief, and said, 'Brothers and sisters, I suppose those who know me have enough of me on Sunday mornin's! So . . . there's a gentleman I want to introduce to you right now!' Whoops and hollers spread over the crowd. 'A fine gentleman and a man of God, born right here in Fayette Cbunty! I expect you already know his name and love him like I do, but I'm gonna say it anyway: the South's greatest evangelist, Jimmy Jed FALCONER!'

There was an explosion of clapping and cheering, and people leaped to their feet. A fat man with a sweat- soaked plaid shirt rose up just in front of Billy, obscuring his view, but then John was rising to his feet with the rest of them and had swept Billy up high so he could see the man in the bright yellow suit who bounded to the platform.

Jimmy Jed Falconer grinned and raised his arms, and suddenly a huge poster began unrolling down the backdrop behind him, a black-and-white Jimmy Jed Falconer in almost the same pose the real one held. Across the poster's top was the large red legend: THE FALCONER CRUSADE.

Falconer waited for the applause and whooping to die down, then stepped quickly to the microphone and said in a polished, booming voice, 'Do you want to know how God speaks, neighbors?' Before anyone could answer, he'd pulled a pistol out of his coat, aimed it upward, and fired: crack! Women screamed, and men were startled. 'That's how He speaks!' Falconer thundered. 'The Lord speaks like a gun, and you don't know when you're going to hear Him or what He's going to say, but you'd sure better be on His right side when He does His talkin'!'

Billy watched the blue haze of gunsmoke waft upward, but he couldn't see a bullethole. Blank he thought.

Falconer set the pistol atop the podium, then swept his intense blue-green gaze across the audience like the searchlight that still pierced the sky outside. Billy thought that the evangelist looked directly at him for a second, and a fearful thrill coursed through him. 'Let's pray,' Falconer whispered.

As the prayer went on, Ramona opened her eyes and lifted her head. She looked first at her son, his head bowed and eyes squeezed tightly shut, then directed her gaze across the tent to a small, frail-looking boy she'd noticed even before Archie Kane had started speaking. Her heart was pounding. Enveloping the child was a shiny, purplish black cocoon of malignant light that pulsated like a diseased heart. The child's head was bowed, his hands clasped tightly in prayer; he sat between his mother and father, two thin figures who had dressed in the pitiful rags of their Sunday best. As Ramona watched, the young mother placed her hand on the child's shoulder and gently squeezed. Her face was gaunt, pale, grasping at the last straw of hope. Tears burned in Ramona's eyes; the little boy was dying from some sickness, and would be dead soon: in a week, a day, several hours—she had no way of knowing when, but the black aura was clinging greedily to him, the sure harbinger of death that she had feared seeing in this crowded tent. She lowered her head, wondering as always when she saw it: What should I do?

And the awful answer, as always: There is nothing you can do.

'Amen,' Jimmy Jed Falconer said. The congregation looked up, ready for an explosion of fire and brimstone.

But he began softly, by whispering, 'Sin.'

The sound of his voice made Billy tremble. John leaned forward slightly in his seat, his eyes wide and entranced; Ramona saw the dying child rest his head against his mother's shoulder.

'Sin,' Falconer repeated, gripping the podium. 'What do you think of it? What do you think is a sin? Somethin' you're not supposed to do or say or think?' He closed his eyes for a second. 'Oh Lord God, sin . . . it's an evil that gets in the blood, gets in our hearts and minds and . . . corrupts, decays, makes rotten . . .'

He looked across the congregation, bright beads of sweat shining on his face. Then, in an instant, his placid expression changed; his lips curled, his eyes widened, and he growled, 'SINNNNNN. . . . Can you smell it can you feel it can you see it? Do you know, neighbors, when you've sinned? I'll tell you what sin is, neighbors, pure and simple: it's walking away from God's light, that's what it is!' His ruddy face rippled with emotion, his voice taking the place of the silent organ, flowing up and down the scales. He pointed into the audience, at no one in particular, yet at everyone. 'Have you ever stepped out of the light,' he whispered, 'and found yourself in a dark place?'

Billy tensed, sat bolt upright.

'I mean a darrrrrk place,' the evangelist said, his voice deep and gravelly. 'I mean a place so dark and Evil you can't find your way out. Answer for yourselves: have you been there?'

Yes, Billy thought. And it's still in my head, it comes to me at night when I try to sleep. . . .

'No matter where the place is—the poolhall, the gamblin' room, the shothouse, or the moonshine still— there's hope, neighbors. Or it might be even darker than that: it might be the Room of Lust, or Envy, or Adultery. If you're in one of those dark places, then you're a guest of Satan!'

Billy's eyes widened, his heart thumping. The last nightmare he'd had, several nights before, streaked through his mind: in it he'd sat up in his bed and seen the black mountain of coal slithering toward him through the hallway, and then the awful white hand had plunged out and grasped Billy's sheet . . . slowly, slowly pulling it off and to the floor.

'SATAN'S GOT YOU!' Falconer roared, the veins of his neck bulging. 'That cloven-hoofed, horned, fork- tongued Devil has got you right in his clawwwwws'—he lifted his right hand into the air, contorting it into a claw and twisting as if ripping flesh from the bone—'and he's gonna squeeze you and mold you and make you like he isssss! . . . And if you're a guest in Satan's house and you like the dark, evil place, then you don't