“Seal’s helping her with ACORN,” I said.
“I heard you the first time,” Bud said. “I talked with Seal this morning. She’s going with Dickie Cloward now.”
I felt as if I was falling a long way down.
We drove from Main Street to Seaville High, and around the back to the stadium, where we parked for a while, and Bud smoked.
“I might skip Western Bible and stick around for a while.”
“For Mom’s sake,” I said.
“Dad needs me, too.”
“You’d work for ACE?”
“All ACE really is, is him,” said Bud.
“And Donald.”
“Yep.”
“Don’t forget Divine Donald,” I snickered, and I looked across at Bud, but he wasn’t picking up on the old cue.
He finally said, “I’ve missed Dad.”
He didn’t say me.
He didn’t even say Mom.
He said he missed Dad.
Then he changed the subject. “Something really extraordinary happened at The Helping Hand Tabernacle last night,” he began, and that was when I first heard about Opal.
It’s been about six months now, and as Donald would say, she’s the hottest ticket in town.
They come from far and wide to see Opal, and hear her sing in tongues. Since her one and only TV appearance the night of the Soaking, she’s become the newest Seaville celebrity.
I haven’t gone to see her. I don’t think I will. It’s not because I’m not curious. I am.
But for a while anyway, I’m not going to any church.
“Oh, now you’re going through that stage,” my mother says. “First Bud, now you.”
My father doesn’t say much, not to me, anyway. He’s busy battling with Bud, the color back in his cheeks, and the sparkle in his eyes again. Sunday mornings they star together on the white balcony, in matching blue robes with gold tassels. You’ve probably seen them, and just before they come into view, you’ve probably seen
Next month the two of them are taking a Winning Rally to England and Australia.
“One day,” my mother says, “your name will be up there with theirs.”
I never tell her that’s what I’m most afraid of.
Fifteen
OPAL RINGER
YOU ALL KNOW THE rest.
Bud often comes to hear me, says someday he hopes I’ll be on one of their shows. He’s not the only one who’s asked me to go on the TV. I’ve been asked by famous TV shows besides It’s Up to You, and I’ve been asked by people who’ve got nothing to do with the Lord, and offered money.
But I belong to The Helping Hand Tabernacle. You have to come down to The Hollow to hear me.
One time way far back, I made a wish on a cookie wrapper going up in flames, that you all’d really like me.
Now you come to hear me sing tongues, so many of you Daddy says it’s like flies on the sweet cake. He has D. Y. and Bobby John down at the door, seeing we got room before we let you in.
We’ve got the CheckCheek installed now and Daddy does the offering with a computer.
You all come but him. Jesse doesn’t come.
Bud says, “He’s lost, we have to pray for Jesse, Opal,” and it’s something we can do together without getting into trouble. Me and him has seen the Devil’s face, sweet nights when we slip, for there’s the sin in us same as there’s the spirit.
If I was to say that finally Opal Ringer was going to tell you what she really thinks of you, would you laugh?
I love you, yes I love you. When The Rapture comes, I want you all along, somehow, someway, every last one of you, ascending with me.
When The Rapture comes, I hope you’re there.
I know all your faces so well.
THE END
A Personal History by M. E. Kerr
My real name is Marijane Meaker.
When I first came to New York City from the University of Missouri, I wanted to be a writer. To be a writer back then, one needed to have an agent. I sent stories out to a long list of agents, but no one wanted to represent me. So, I decided to buy some expensive stationery and become my own agent. All of my clients were me with made-up names and backgrounds. “Vin Packer” was a male writer of mystery and suspense. “Edgar and Mamie Stone” were an elderly couple from Maine who wrote confession stories. (They lived far away, so editors would not invite them for lunch.) “Laura Winston” wrote short stories for magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal. “Mary James” wrote only for Scholastic. Her bestseller is Shoebag, a book about a cockroach who turns into a little boy.
My most successful writer was Vin Packer. I wrote twenty-one paperback suspense novels as Packer. When I wanted to take credit for these books, my editor told me I could not, because Vin Packer was the bestselling author—not Marijane Meaker.
I was friends with Louise Fitzhugh—author of Harriet the Spy—who lived near me in New York City. We often took time away from our writing to have lunch, and we would gripe about writing being such hard work. Louise would claim that writing suspense novels was easier than writing for children because you could rob and murder and include other “fun things.” I’d answer that children’s writing seemed much easier; describing adults from a kid’s eye, writing about school and siblings—there was endless material.
I asked Louise what children’s book she would recommend, and she said I’d probably like Paul Zindel’s The Pigman, a book for children slightly older than her audience. I did like it, a lot, and I decided my next book would be a teenage one (at the time, we didn’t use the term “YA” to describe that genre). I knew I would need yet another pseudonym for this venture, so I invented one, a take-off on my last name, Meaker: M. E. Kerr. (Louise, on the other hand, never tried to write for adults. She was a very good artist, and her internal quarrel was whether to be a writer or a painter.)
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! was my first Kerr novel. The story
