When he was strong enough to move, Billy started home. His legs were leaden, and a dull pressure throbbed at his temples; for one thing he was grateful though—the feeling was slowly seeping back into his right hand. He took a shortcut through the dark and quiet forest, with the man in the moon grinning down, and prayed he'd never have to do anything like what happened tonight again.
Nearer Hawthorne, he was startled by something moving at the crest of a rise, there amid pines and boulders. It looked like a large man in the moonlight, but there was something animalish and disturbing about it. Billy stood still for a moment, his senses questing, but the figure was gone. As he skirted the rise, he thought he'd seen moonlight glinting wetly off what might have been curved, sharp tusks.
And he remembered the beast's warning and promise.
'Feed the fire, brothers and sisters!' Jimmy Jed Falconer roared, his face licked with firelight above the bright yellow suit. 'Feed the fire and starve the Devil!'
He stood on a wooden platform out in the middle of a dusty dumping ground near Birmingham. A backdrop had been constructed to hold the huge falconer crusade banner.
Falconer grinned. Before him was a huge crackling circle of fire, feeding on hundreds of pounds of paper and several hundred black vinyl discs. There was a line of teen-agers waiting to throw their record albums into the flames and people with boxes of books obtained from school and public libraries. The service had been going on for almost three hours, starting with psalm singing, then one of J.J. Falconer's most searing sermons on the Devil trying to consume America's youth, followed by an hour-long healing session that had left people dancing and talking in tongues.
Burning pages wafted into the air like fiery bats. Embers puffed out and drifted down. Records cracked and melted. 'Here, gimme those, son.' Falconer carefully leaned over the platform's edge and took several records from a heavyset young man with newly cropped black hair and acne scars. He looked at the jacket art, all psychedelic drawings and pictures, and held up one of them, by a group called Cream. 'Yeah, this'll 'blow your mind,' won't it? It'll send you to Hell, that's what it'll do!' He sailed the record into the fire, to shouts and applause. The Jefferson Airplane flew into the flames next, followed by Paul Revere and the Raiders. 'Is this what the Lord wants you to hear?' he asked, baiting the crowd. 'Does He want you to grow your hair to your knees and take drugs and 'blow your mind'?' He tossed Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs into the flames.
There were resounding cheers as Falconer broke a Beatles record over his knee, then held it at the jacket's edge, with his other hand clamping shut his nostrils. He threw it in to burn. 'Folks, if somebody tells you that everybody's growin' long hair and fillin' themselves full of LSD and runnin' away from the Commies like yellow cowards, then you tell them this:
Suddenly he couldn't draw a breath. A sharp, cold pain ripped across his chest, and he felt as if he might pass out. He held the microphone at his side, afraid that it might pick up his whimper of agony; then he was sinking down to his knees, his head bent over, and he heard people clapping and hollering, thinking that this was all part of his message. He squeezed his eyes shut.
'Burn it!' he heard a high, merry voice shout.
A hand gripped his fleshy shoulder 'Dad?'
Falconer looked up into his son's face. The boy was growing into a handsome young man, with a lean strong body that looked trim in the tan suit he wore. He had a long, sharp-chinned face topped with a mass of thickly curled red hair, and now his deep-set, electric-blue eyes glinted with concern. 'You all right, Dad?'
'Lost my breath,' Falconer said, and tried to struggle to his feet. 'Let me rest for just a minute.'
Wayne glanced out at the congregation, and realized they were waiting for someone to lead them. He grasped the microphone his father held.
'No, Wayne,' Falconer said, grinning, with the sweat running down his face. 'I'm fine. Just lost my breath is all. It's the heat.'
'The TV cameras are on us, Dad,' Wayne said, and pulled the microphone away from his father As Wayne straightened up and turned toward the congregation, his face abruptly pulled tight, the blue eyes widening and the perfect white teeth showing in a wide smile that hung on the edge of a grimace. His body tensed, as if gripping the microphone had sent a charge of power through him.
'The glory of the Lord is with us
'BURN IT!'
Wayne balanced on the edge, seemingly about to leap into the fire himself. 'Lord says WHAT?'
'Burn it! Burn it! Burn ...'
Falconer knew the boy had them now. The local TV station cameras were aimed at the young healer. Falconer rose unsteadily to his feet. The pain was gone and he knew he'd be all right. But he wanted to get back to the Airstream trailer to rest, then he'd return and give the benediction. He made his way across the platform to the steps. All eyes were on Wayne. Falconer stopped for a moment to turn back and watch his son. Wayne's entire body seemed to glow with energy, with wonderful strength and youth. It was Wayne who'd come up with the idea of holding a 'sin-burning,' sure that there would be local media coverage. The ideas and plans just seemed to pop out of the boy's head fully formed; Wayne had suggested they move the Crusade into Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia, and into Florida where they could work year-round. The schedules had been drawn up, and for the past seven years the Crusade had expanded like a tick on a bloodhound. Now Wayne was talking about pushing the Crusade into Texas, where there were so many little towns and so far apart, and he wanted Falconer to buy a Fayette radio station that was about to lose its license. Wayne was taking flying lessons, and had already piloted the Crusade's Beechraft on short business trips.
The boy was strong and had God in his heart, Falconer knew, but still . . . something ate at Wayne, day and night. Something drove him, and tried to control him. He had fits of moods and temper, and sometimes he locked himself in the prayer chapel at home for hours on end. And Wayne had been complaining of a strange recurring nightmare lately, some nonsense about a snake and an eagle. Falconer couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Falconer was tired. He felt a sudden and awful pang of jealousy, and of anger at growing older and heavier and weaker.
He walked toward the trailer. His heart was deteriorating, the doctors had told him. Why, as he'd asked himself many times, was he afraid to ask Wayne to heal his heart, to patch up the leaks and make him strong again?
His answer was always the same as well: Because he was deeply afraid that Wayne's healing Toby had been a strange—and terrible—fluke. And if Wayne tried to heal him and nothing happened, then . . . What had stayed with him for seven years was the voice of that Creekmore woman, the Hawthorne Valley witch, raised to tell everybody that he and his young son were murderers of the worst kind. Down deep inside, far from the light, in a dark place that knew neither God nor Satan but was instead wholly frightened animal, a nerve of truth had been trembling for seven long years.
'No,' Falconer said. 'No. The Lord's workin' through my son. He healed a dumb animal, didn't he? He's healed more than a thousand people.' He shook his head. He had to shut off his thinking before it was harmful. He reached the shining silver trailer, unlocked it, and stepped inside. There was a plaque on the wall that said believe, and that was good enough for him.
SIX
