He had been at the wheel of the Edsel since midday services. Perhaps six hours, with the joyous voices of the Brethren coming over the CB joined in song. Like all Josephites, W. Bond Wiggs abjured godless radio stations. Those that pretended to be religious were worst of all, polluting airwaves with so-called Christian Heavy Metal, ceaselessly soliciting donations. The Elect had no need of Golden Oldies or Soviet Sounds when they had hymns and a limited band communion.
Elder Seth sat beside him, mouth set in a straight line. Another man in mirrorshades might be thought asleep, lulled by the lilting chorus, but Brother Wiggs knew the elder was eternally vigilant. No sin escaped his eye.
After the drive, the flat plastic flask strapped to Wiggs's inner thigh was full and sloshing. Since his voluntary amendment, he ceased to notice the needs of his urino-genital arrangement. Many long-haul drivers without his special consideration adopted such contrivaptions to cut down on pit-stops.
When the Inner Council of the Brethren of Joseph gathered to plan the first convoy of resettlement, none had foreseen that the demands of nearly a hundred bladders would require more stoppages than equipment failure or skirmishes with
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The Brethren worked like a Marine platoon, fixing up lean-tos and shelters. Brother Bailie, who had seen combat in Mexico and the Central American Confederation, posted look-outs and inspected facilities. There was already a line by the rest rooms. Sisters held the hands of antsy children. More than a few youngers had had 'accidents', a backsliding against Christian Continence sure to earn many a chastisement.
He walked away from the Edsel towards the skeleton screen. It had to be a 100 feet long and 50 high. Sinful harlots would have filled the view, vast close-up lips swallowing an entire audience at a gulp. Twenty yards from the scaffolding, asphalt gave out to dunes. A low wall was overwhelmed by the sand. Wiggs put his foot up on the wall, pleasurably popping his cramped thigh, and hitched his black pantsleg to the knee. The outflow tube was taped down his leg to his ankle, where a plastic spigot faucet tied off the system.
Wiggs turned the faucet and emptied a day's water into the sand. He felt not so much as a twinge from what wasn't there. Before the amendment, he had worried about stories he had heard of amputees with phantom pains in missing limbs. He had no such experiences. He hadn't put on weight, his voice hadn't climbed an octave and the fire hadn't gone out of his faith; he just didn't feel like being a sinner any more. He had found salvation in the Brethren of Joseph.
A nearby wall, covered in pasted-over and torn-away posters for long-gone coming attractions, was a collage of faces, breasts and legs. Wiggs recognised godless harlots of the silver screen and video machine.
Before his amendment, Wiggs had held a special place in his lustful, sinful heart for Traci Lords. There were disembodied segments of Traci on the wall. And Sharon Stone's libidinous eyes, Geena Davis's mile-long limbs, Meryl Streep's welcoming mouth, Voluptua Whoopee's pillow chest. They did not call to him now.
He turned his back on sin and walked back to the ve-hickles, righteous pride rising. Tonight, if called, he would testify. He must abjure his former ways in public.
Carnal excess had been his abiding drive. Through adulterous fornication, he had lost two wives and three children. Directed by the white throb of his urges, his body was consumed by lust. No woman was safe with him. He would lie, wheedle, cheat, cajole and coerce. Nothing was too low if it enticed some godless hagwitch into his bed or automobile and loosed her from her drawers.
He shook his head with sorrow. Sister Maureen smiled at him and, mercifully, he felt no desire to fall upon her.
As a young man, he had been promising. In Macon County, Georgia, where his Daddy was Sheriff, he had been a Deputy in the early '60s. Law enforcement offered opportunities for sin. Solitary female motorists were persuaded to give of their favours to avoid speeding tickets. The wives and daughters of men he locked in the hoosegow would often yield up virtue in the hope of expediting the release of loved ones. Best of all, many was the loose woman who found herself in an overnight cell when W. Bond Wiggs was sole turnkey and custodian. There was a separate section, round the back, for coloured prisoners. Many a night Deputy W. B. Wiggs would saunter there with a jug of cone liquor, and cut out some little ole gal for a taste of dark meat. He had cleaved to sinning as a fly to sticky paper and tasted the bitter gall of self-degradation.
As the Josephites prepared their simple evening meal in a bank of microwaves. Elder Seth stood a little apart and a little elevated, looking down on his flock. The dying sun flashed in his mirrorshades. He was still as a figurehead. The mere sight of the Elder gave Wiggs strength to continue remembering the dark days.
Finally, mere carnality was not enough to excite his depraved tastes, and Wiggs had availed himself of the handcuffs and nightsticks easily accessible in the lock-up. His pursuit of lechery cost him families and his job. His Daddy passed on in 76, the day Spiro Agnew was elected. Sheriff Wiggs had been turning an uppity nigra away from the polling booth with a cattle-prod when an aneurism had burst in his graymass. The new sheriff had immediately kicked Wiggs off the force. In the unholy spirit of vengeance, Wiggs forced attentions on the Sheriff's daughters and found it necessary to leave his native county and state.
Now he fervently hoped Sheriff Pullinger could find it in his heart to forgive him for his undoubted sins. He wondered if it were not too late to make reparation.
By the earth-mover, Brother Kenneth and Sister Barbara held hands and read from
For fifteen years, Wiggs had drifted and sinned. He picked up spells of work as a security Op, but most of his hours were consumed by the pursuit of harlots. He travelled from town to town and state to state, sinning all the way. He had been a notable imbiber of the Devil's alcohol, a habitual drinker of Satan's caffeine and a not-infrequent dependant on proscribed chemicals.
W. Bond Wiggs must have stank of his sins. Stank to high heaven.
Trestle tables were erected and food laid out upon them. The Brethren gathered and took their places. Wiggs sat at the Elder's right hand, as was fit. Elder Seth read the blessing and the Brethren ate in prayerful silence. Josephites abjured stimulants and spices, so the fare was plain and unflavoured, sustenance for the body not distraction for the palate. Wiggs happily spooned into his mouth a mush which contained all essentials for the prolongation of life but no harmful additives.
After a meal, Wiggs' taste-buds occasionally yearned for coffee, the most reviled of all stimulants. But the only coffee legally available in the United States was recaff, which hardly counted. All in all, he did not miss any of the things the Brethren were required to put behind them. He certainly did not miss the sins of the flesh. These days, he rarely even thought of them.
Young women, old women, illegally young women, indecently old women. Fat women, thin women, short women, tall women. Dark women, fair women, black women, white women. All of them he had used and cast away until Elder Seth showed him how to escape the coils of his desires.
He had been in Tombstone, Arizona, in a pornobooth at the virtual mall, hips bucking as the milking sleeve simulated the skilled orifice of some faceless harlot. The Revelation was a Fiery Coming. It screeched through the sensory inputs and blanked out the sinful loop. Tearing out of the mall, the weight of Sin crushing him like a falling safe, he found his way to a revival staged in the historic OK Corrall. In a Battle of the Brothers, a succession of evangelists mounted the stand, preaching until the audience gonged them off.
Come one, come all, announced barkers. Anyone could take the lectern.
Staggering into the crowd, self-disgust coursing through his graymass like electricity, Wiggs heard four or five preachers booed off the altar. A hooded pastor of the Church of Jesus Christ, Caucasian, was passed over heads by a multitude of hands and tossed squealing into the street. It was a tough congregation, perpetually on the edge of an ugly mood. A singing nun didn't get into the second '-nique' of 'Domi-nique-nique-nique' before she was stripped of her penguin cowl and dumped in the horse-trough. It seemed no-one could satisfy this crowd's thirst for a sermon. They had come to hear the Word and weren't taking any tin dollars.
Then, striding to the podium as Wyatt Earp had strode over the same dirt to face the Clanton Boys, came a tall man with a wide black hat and simple mirrored sunglasses.
From that day to this, Wiggs had never seen the Elder without his shades. He wondered if the man suffered
