'Everything I could,' she said.
'About the only way to get the damned fool's attention was something painful upside the head. I had to ring his skull like a bell every now and then just to let him know I was still around.'
Rae spoke with the conviction of a woman who had just recently seen a talk show on the subject. 'That was an abusive relationship,' she declared.
'Ain't they all,' said Aural. 'Ain't they all.'
The crowd waiting outside the tent after the show had grown to almost a quarter of the one that had been inside earlier. Everyone seemed to want to talk personally to the performers, like fans at a rock concert. Many of them were for the Reverend Tommy, of course, eager to touch the hands that had healed so many, but more of them, and an ever increasing number, were for Aural. They clustered around her so thickly she could scarcely move, thrusting things for her to sign, speaking her name, some in whispers, some in chants as if invoking it. The men crowded in for a nearer look, hardly believing that the beauty they had perceived from a distance could withstand closer scrutiny, then lingered, amazed. The women came to see if that sweetness, that aura of holiness and divine selfassurance, could survive removal from the stage, the lighting of the tent, the spirituality of the show. If the girl was truly inclined to sainthood, they wanted to be next to her, and if she was a sham, then all of them, men and women, hoped to be relieved of the unexpected hopes she had given rise to.
Aural disappointed none of them, smiling indefatigably, murmuring words of encouragement and humble thanks.
She signed their autographs, suffered their questions, allowed them to touch her velvet robe and, occasionally, stroke her long hair. She took credit for none of the miracles of the evening, directing them all to the Reverend Tommy, who stood amid his own coterie only a few yards away, straining to hear what was being said by Aural and her admirers while still nodding sympathetically to the sufferers clustered around him. It had not escaped his notice that her following grew and grew.
Some of the faces had become recognizable, coming to show after show even though Tommy was careful about holding performances in towns at least fifty miles apart from each other.
They had begun to follow her like groupies, and Tommy's awareness of the potential for gain in the situation was offset by his increasing envy.
I He was going to have to do something about it, that much was for sure.
It was rapidly becoming the Aural McKesson Show, featuring the Reverend Tommy R. Walker, instead of the other way around and if he wasn't careful, Aural might wake up to the fact that it could just as easily be the Aural McKesson Show, featuring herself as saint and singer, and to hell with the Reverend Tommy altogether. The girl had shown no aptitude for curing folks as yet,_ and as far as he knew she hadn't even tried, but she certainly understood the technique, and Tommy was not so far gone in self-esteem not to know that she could do it just as well as he could if she put her mind to it.
Probably a lot better because, damn it, she had that look of sanctity about her when she was up on that stage, wearing that robe he gave her, that no amount of thumping and sweating by Tommy would ever overcome. If her followers could ever see her the way she really was, a foulmouthed, ungrateful, irreverent, greedy, sacrilegious little tease of a tramp-the way Tommy knew her to bebut then the trick was always to keep your public life and your private life separate, and Aural had seemed to understand that from the start.
He was going to have to deal with things pretty soon, because to hear Rae tell it Aural could walk away with the Apostolic just by crooking her finger. And with Rae, too, he suspected, even though she would never admit it.
Rae had become more fascinated with Aural than she was with Tommy. And growing rebellious and uppity in little ways under the girl's influence, too. The Apostolics sure weren't the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but they were trained and docile and worked cheap and without them and without Rae to do the hundred little things she did, Tommy would be without a show, without a livelihood, without a goddamned prayer. He was too old to start over again with nothing more than a gold Bible and a winning way and ten thousand feet of patched canvas tent.
Tommy looked over to where Aural stood amid her fans. She was smiling that little smile she used when she was being saintly, nothing big enough to show actual mirth. It was the kind of smile a mother used when watching her child do something endearing for the umpteenth patient, knowing, ever tolerant of her beloved. The around her were lapping it up. He saw Rae standing at the edge of the crowd, studying Aural with the same devotion as all the others, as if she actually believed the act, as if she didn't have access to the real Aural whenever she wanted it. The flock attending Tommy had dispersed, many of them gravitating towards Aural's crowd, so that Tommy stood alone, watching the phenomenon he had helped to create.
Either he had to harness Aural in a way she couldn't get loose from him … or he had to get rid of her, quick.
He didn't have any idea of a way to harness her-she could shrug him off and walk off with his show anytime she wanted to-and it wouldn't be long before she realized that as well as Tommy.
But he did know how to get rid of her.
Cooper had to walk three miles to work because there was no public transportation to the restaurant and he did not have a car, but the walk did not bother him. On the way to work it gave him a chance to run over in his mind his course of action for the day, and on the return trip, when it was dark outside except for the headlights of cars going past on the road, he used the time to pore over the day's events and see where he had done right and where he had gone wrong. It wasn't like the life in prison; there were so many ways to make a mistake here in the world.
Nobody yelled at him at the job when he made a mistake-Cooper was not the kind of man to raise your voice to-but they had other ways of letting him know. Ways that made him feel much worse. He knew they were all talking about him behind his back, mocking, him, laughing at his incompetence, smirking at his slowness.
But he had ways of getting back at them. That was what he considered on his walk to work, the methods he would use to get even with all the snickering, condescending shitass little clerks who worked in the restaurant with him.
A different way for each one. He could just squeeze them all together and punish them at once, but that wouldn't be any fun. He wanted to get them one at a time and do it leisurely so they knew why they were being punished, and he wanted to do each one in a different way-because that would be fun.
He didn't know exactly when he would start repaying his fellow employees, but he knew he would have to have a car first, for two reasons. If he had a car he could transport them somewhere away from the restaurant. Finding a place wouldn't be hard-the road was lined by scruffy, piney woods on both sides and there was nothing in there but trees and bushes and snakes. Cooper knew that because he had gone exploring. The land was no good for yfarming, too close to the road for living. It was junk land and Cooper was thinking of ways of putting a whole lot of junk on it. Or under it.
The other reason he'd need a car was to go away in when he was finished.
He'd have to be stupid to just stick around, still walking to and from the restaurant when there was nobody left to work in it but him. And Cooper wasn't stupid. Sometimes it took him a while to figure out exactly what he wanted to do, but that didn't make him stupid.
The clerks at the restaurant would find out just how smart he was, soon enough. As soon as he got a car.
And he wasn't going to steal one, either. He knew better than that, that was the way to have every cop in the state pulling you over and asking for your registration. It would be his own car, it would belong to him, he would pay for it with his own money. Or at least he'd make the down payment. He could see himself doing that, walking into the used-car lot, pointing to the car he wanted, then wiping that smug smile off the salesman's face by pulling a wad of bills from his pocket and counting them off. He could see himself taking the keys from the hands of the clerk who would be impressed now, getting behind the,wheel, and driving right out of there with the registration in his pocket. After that Cooper couldn't see any more about the car; that was the only picture he had in his mind.
But it was enough. It would be fun, and he knew what he'd do once he got the car. That part was a little fuzzy, too, but not because he couldn't see it clearly. Rather, because he could see too many possibilities.
Meanwhile, the walk was fine with Cooper. Once in a while some stranger would slow down and offer him a ride. Cooper liked that, as long as they didn't try to talk to him too much. He liked sitting in a different car, he liked studying the driver from the corner of his eye, he liked imagining what he'd do to them if they tried any funny stuff.
