Poe slammed down both fists simultaneously, thumping the leather-bound Bible that rested upon the pulpit.
‘But who, Preacher Poe? Who?’ asked Carl Holfe, standing suddenly, his urgent question echoed by the entire congregation as it rose to its feet in a rowdy clamour. With fingers outstretched, Abie Poe raised his hands a second time. He stood there for some minutes, head lowered, hands extended. Finally the din quelled and Poe lifted his head.
‘I think we have one brave soul here willing to cast the first stone. Mrs Eldridge, would you like to come forward?’
From the congregation came forth six women, led by the cripple. A platoon of hags with ruckled faces disfigured by the bitter bile of their days and eyes small and yellow and mean with spite. Six wives like six hooded lizards, blowing lethal breath. The mussitation of the crowd dropped instantly. All that could be heard was the squeal and scrape of the battered wheelchair as it drew up before the pulpit and slowly turned to face the congregation. Hilda Baxter, the cripple’s constant companion, stood behind her tightly gripping the handles of the chair. Eliza Williamson and Bess Snow stood either side of her like a pair of matching suitcases, and behind them, to the left and right of the pulpit, tiny Hulga Vanders and giant Kate Byrun gave the stone sorority a lopsided look. Each woman gave Poe a nod of recognition then turned to the congregation, now seated, and silently challenged any dissentient. Wilma Eldridge fingered her crucifix, massaging the silver Christ to warmth.
‘Clearly, brothers and sisters, Satan has planted a thistle in God’s very soil.’
‘A-men,’ said the women around her in unison, the claque echoing them a moment later.
‘And clearly we must locate that thistle and tear it from the earth.’
‘A-men!’
‘Brothers and sisters of the prophet Jonas Ukulore, I know where it grows! That thistle! That weed! I know!’
‘A-men!’
‘That evil weed, perverting and corrupting! I know! That evil weed, whose solicitating arms reach down into the very hearts of our homes!’
‘A-men! A-men!’ the men and women of the congregation blattered with growing momentum, though there, were few among them who knew who it was they prosecuted.
‘The weed grows deep, and black are its roots. Scarlet is its demon flower!’
‘A-men!!’
‘Yea! Ululites! Yea! Soldiers of the Lord!’
‘A-men!!’
‘That weed grows deep on Hooper’s Hill! Together we must find the strength to cast it out! A-men!!’
‘A-men!’
The women all rose to their feet, thin hard hands clasped to rising chests. Those who had them looked to their husbands, and the transgressors among these men were the first to stand in support. Gloating smiles slid into the mouths of the women. Wilma Eldridge drubbed the arms of her chair and Poe thumped at his Bible till all four fists were beating the same grave and direful meter. Soon the valley sounded with the manifold thump! thump! thump! of fist against leather or polished oak. Thump! Thump! Thump! pounded the heart of the House of the Lord, up on Glory Hill.
XV
Cosey Mo lay slumped in the kick and prickle of morphine, the bloody syringe hanging, spent, between thumb and fore. She tied off. The crashing rain retreated, becoming a distant murmur to her ears. Her heart’s heavy beat lay like a wonderful egg, warm in its wet and crimson nest.
Naked on the bench seat, she curled toward the window that overlooked the valley and peeled back its curtain. Drawing up, she forced her eyes to focus. Catching sight of a set of headlights moving up Hooper’s Hill, her eyes drifted to the clock on the wall. It was twelve noon. Sunday. In the past few weeks, Sunday afternoon had become one of her busiest periods; even so, twelve o’clock seemed very early.
Naked still, and perched on the end of her bed, Cosey applied her make-up, her limbs’ former languor lost in a series of well-practiced movements – a blackened stroke, a blushing smudge, a smear of scented cherry, a lavender dab – until her heavy lids and sullen pout were brought magically alive. She pulled on a pair of stockings, hitching them to nothing, and, lastly, the pink robe. Buttoning it down the front, Cosey Mo seemed oblivious to the number of vehicles that had pulled up outside her caravan.
Glancing first in the mirror and then at the clock, she took a deep breath and opened the door, her breasts swelling and shifting inside her scant robe. ‘Well now, who’s the early bird then?’ she teased to the drumming rain. There, leaning and rocking on her heels, as she was, back and forth, in the doorway of the caravan.
From amidst the teeming folds of the rain-drenched noon, Abie Poe’s chill skull loomed forth a carping bone of accusation, hissing:
‘Behold, brethren! Behold the scarlet sloven! Discovered! Hear this, whore! Dirtiness is next to anti-Godliness! Yea! Painted seductress, your den is upturned! Temptress! Whore! Speak not, for your tongue is cloven! As is your gender! Cloven as the viper’s tongue! Cloven as the hoof of Satan! Your words know only the alleyways of trickery and deceit! Speak not, for our ears are warned against you! Bloody lily of the muck-heap! Begone! Yea! Get thee behind me, Satan! You have riddled this pious acre with sin and sloth! But your day has come! Out! Out! Get thee from our ground!’
The sisterhood of screaming heads hovered around the preacher, forming a grotesque gloriole about him. They barked like wounded bitches, Wilma Eldridge leading the pack.
‘Out! Fornicatrix! Begone! While we still have a mind to let you! Base baggage! Minx! Or is it better we burn you out? Wicked temptator! Witch! Out – or burn you we shall!’
Bobbing about the periphery of Cosey’s comprehension like smaller dogs, the menfolk, in sheepish support, finally echoed the bitter maledictions of their wives. Those who wore the leg-irons both of wifedom and of whoredom rattled their chains the loudest.
Framed in the doorway, Cosey had a tired quality to her appearance that served only to enhance her vigorous sensuality. The muscles that lay beneath her thin robe tightened as her body locked into a stance of defiant outrage. Her top lip curled back, baring strong white teeth, and she hissed and seethed and glared at her castigators. Trembling with rage, Cosey thrust one damning finger forward and the men cowered and dodged its accusatory line as if it were a hexing wand that she pointed, or a witch-doctor’s terrible bone.
The crowd fell silent, the rain hammering at its hind. Only Poe’s burlesque banter and the hawking squawks of the cripple, writhing and thrashing in her chair, rose above the rain’s interminable din.
Cosey pointed at Franklin Eldridge, who stood behind his wife, but it was the jaundiced eyes of the cripple into which she stared. Cosey’s lips rose in a cruel, mocking smile.
‘Why Franklin! For shame! You know your day is Friday and here you are again and it’s only Sunday! O such is the lure of a good, strong set of legs!’ Cosey’s robe parted for one taunting thigh.
‘Fra-a-a-anklin!’ roared Wilma Eldridge. ‘Shut her up!’
Franklin, a small sad man, hiked the steps of the caravan, and, wheezing like a distant dying siren, delivered a blow to the harlot’s mouth. He stood back, mouth agape, shocked at the measure of his deed, shocked by the violence and drawing of blood.
Dabbing at her lip and again extending her finger, Cosey saw more damage to be done. She singled out a bigger, badder target.
‘Oh it’s Doggy-Dawes! Down on all four…’
And with fists the size of Cosey’s face, Douglas Dawes pushed Franklin Eldridge to one side, and, barking once, batted the harlot’s skull first left, then right, back and forth, spinning her this way and that, and wrapping her in the beaded curtain that hung in the doorway. There she dangled like a limp marionette, then collapsed in a heap at his feet as though discarded by some reckless puppeteer.