My father said what Seal did was really commendable, not just because it was humane but because it was unusual for someone as rich and beautiful as Seal to be so altruistic. I wasn’t sure how unusual that was, but I did know Seal always got gung ho on any subject that interested the boy she was dating. She was known for that around Seaville.
My father used to tell Bud he chose well, and after Bud left, my father said he hoped Bud realized what he gave up when he told Seal good-bye.
Seal still acted like she hadn’t heard Bud right. She was always at our house, and still so taken up with ACE my father was ready to put her on staff. ACE stood for A Challenge Enterprise, our official name.
It was our second summer on TV, our first in The Summer House.
Even though we were almost at the tip of Long Island, on Sunday mornings traffic would pour into Seaville from as far away as New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
The cars in our parking lot were bumper to bumper all the way back by noon, when my father’s picture came on the enormous screen across from the balcony where he stood, and his voice thundered across the loudspeakers.
The few hundred people who didn’t watch him in their cars had to be in their seats in The Summer House by ten-thirty, long before the TV crew arrived. Everyone drew lots before they climbed the steps up to The Summer House, to see who would be among the lucky dozen to be televised shaking his hand after.
Winters, my father wrote and lectured and traveled around the country with The Challenge Choir, staging Winning Rallies.
Even though I looked like my father (and enough like Bud to be his shorter twin), I was a somnambulant version of him—that’s what my father called me. According to him, the “him” in me had not been awakened yet. He claimed I still made wishes instead of plans, and said if I didn’t decide what I wanted to be, it might be too late when I got around to it.
Bud was the chip off the old block before he split. He was the follower in my father’s footsteps, go-getter, ball of fire. Bud and Seal had all sorts of plans for when Bud would become a preacher. Seal had his same kind of energy and enthusiasm, and like Bud she was tall and blond, and people turned around for a second look. She had green eyes that sparkled and a way of moving that was quick and graceful, and she always seemed to be excited about something—Bud used to tell her she was filled with schemes and dreams, and chuck her under the chin with his thumb until she’d protest, “Listen to me! I’m serious!”
“Well, then, you be the preacher,” he’d say. “You’re the one with the business head, and your daddy could buy you a church!”
Right before Bud cut out he said things like that to Seal a lot. He’d go after our father, too, accusing him of turning religion into big business.
“It is big business,” my father’d answer.
Bud would mutter, “Then count me out.”
“Should the Lord’s work be some two-bit operation?” My father.
Bud would shout back that there was a limit, then he’d storm out of the house and my father’d say he was probably going to cool off over in the von Hennigs’ big swimming pool.
Bud claimed my father would sit down and listen to any idea a von Hennig had, but I think what he was really steamed about was that Seal’s ideas were good ones. Bud couldn’t stand not being the star. Since I could remember, he always wanted to be in the center of the room. That was hard around Seal.
That Sunday morning Seal was excited about a way to improve our “Personality Segment.”
We called it the P.S.
It was a five-minute segment which featured someone who’d overcome adversity. Most of the time my father’s staff found someone from the mailbag, who’d written in for one of the charms he gave away periodically. It could be a gold ladder, or a gold C for Challenge, a gold star (“Shine and twinkle!”), or, as it was that Sunday, a gold nutshell with a crack in it (“If you don’t crack the shell, you can’t eat the nut” was his morning message).
Often the people who wrote in for the charms had inspiring stories. My father would send an ACE scout to interview them. If the scout found a likely candidate, my father would ship whoever it was into Seaville for the P.S.
“Jesse, I just thought of an idea!” Seal said. “Do you know Opal Ringer? Her father runs The Helping Hand Tabernacle?” She didn’t wait for my answer but got to her feet, pulling her long hair back from her face. “Opal and her mother work for us, and last night Arnelle said they’re having a healing this afternoon!”
I was watching the end of the P.S. on TV. A heroin addict from Atlanta, Georgia, had just told how he kicked his habit when he became a Born-Again Christian. The choir was starting to sing “What a Difference You’ve Made in My Life.”
I could hear the car motors turn over out in the lot. A lot of our auto viewers didn’t wait for the Glory Be, to get started ahead of the traffic.
“Jesse, what about getting someone from right here in Seaville for the P.S.? What about getting someone who’s been healed?”
“Have you ever been to one of those things, Seal?”
“It’s a really neat idea! Your father’s always saying he wants to do more for the local churches!”
She didn’t answer my question; she didn’t
