The Reverend Tommy was a quick and prolific sweater, a curse during his teenaged years, particularly when in pursuit of girls, but turned nicely into an asset in his Bible-thumping, crowd-working career. An average man could prowl the stage and wave his arms and testify for the Lord for a good long while before he began to perspire, but Tommy would break into a sweat within the first few minutes and it would pour off his face and under his arms and down his back so that his shirt would stick to him and his hair would turn as stringy and lank as if he had just been in the river. He looked, he would sometimes joke, as if he had baptized himself right there onstage without the aid of anybody else's water. The audiences responded to the effect because it made it look as if he was wrestling with the devil in a mighty and powerful way, and they figured that any man with that — much natural internal heat could surely spare some healing warmth for them.
A sallow man, his complexion looked even whiter when contrasted with the coal blackness of his hair and massively bushy eyebrows that met in the middle atop the the bridge of his nose. His hair had always been as black as tar and Tommy took some cosmetic pains to keep it that way now that nature wanted to sprinkle it with gray.
The combination of light and dark was even more pronounced under the dim lights within the tent-it was easier to perform miracles in the gloom than in broad daylight-and at times, to the more devoted and imaginative of his audience, he seemed to be lit by an inner light. Others, if they could have articulated their perceptions, would have said the combination looked more satanic than holy, but who was ungrateful enough to question the source of healing?
Tonight neither sweating nor his complexion nor his tireless thumping and pounding and exhorting and top-of the-register prayer were having the desired effect. The citizens of Bald Nob just weren't sensing the presence of, the holy spirit among them, and Tommy was feeling a bit of panic. Lately, audiences had been getting worse, although he didn't remember any of them being quite this moribund. He blamed the perfidious influence of television. They could find a good shouting and praying and healing just about every week on the tube, and with altogether better production values than Tommy could muster. The television ministers would even heal long distance-all one had to do was huddle up close to that TV set and feel the medicinal touch coming right at them through the airwaves. For a donation of suitable size, the evangelist would even mention the viewer's name and affliction during his broadcast, offering personalized service in the privacy of his own living room but within earshot of millions. That sort of thing made audiences entirely too passive, yet too demanding. There was no substitute for the actual contact with a human hand as offered by the Reverend Tommy R. Walker, but it had become increasingly difficult to convince an audience of that. Tommy would have killed for a chance to go on television himself, of course, but in the meantime, television was killing him.
From the corner of his eye he saw the girl with the angel's face start to move. He had kept track of her during his orating, staring at her as much as he could allow himself while still turning his charms and attentions on the whole crowd. She had seemed from a distance to be smirking at him, but the lights were at their dimmest in the back of the tent and Tommy could not be sure. He was trying to devise a way of meeting her after the show and wiping that smirk off her face at the same time he relieved her of her clothing, and it might well be that his split focus accounted in part for his lack of success with the rest of the audience. Spellbinding required a good deal of attention to the business at hand as well as great energy.
For a second he feared that she was moving towards the exit, but then he realized that she was coming down the aisle towards him. He had not called for the afflicted to come forth yet, and her movement caught the attention of the audience. Now they were looking at her, their interest caught more by the beautiful girl than by his spellbinding, and, damn it, that was just the kind of thing that could make him have to start all over again.
She stopped right at the edge of the stage, standing next to the wheelchair of the lady with the bad shoulder.
"Reverend Tommy," she said.
Tommy tried to ignore her and kept right on preaching as if she didn't exist, weren't there right in front of him, the cynosure of the whole damned crowd of gawking rubes.
"Reverend Tommy," she cried again, this time louder, and with her arms reaching out to him. There was no ignoring her now and, God help him, this time he had heard her voice, the garbled noise of a severe speech impediment. Vocal problems were the worst. You could get a cripple to stand for a second or two and you could sometimes induce a flash of light for the blind if you pushed on the eyeball-or you could make him think you did-but there was no way someone with a cleft palate was going to shout "Praise the lord" in tones that were suddenly round and intelligible. The whole damned audience could hear the afflicted was still afflicted, no matter what the afflicted thought about himself.
"Heal me," the beautiful girl was saying, or at least Tommy guessed that was what she was saying. Even as he was trying to figure a way out of this, Tommy could not help but feel anger that such a lovely woman would be given such a hardship to bear. She was young, looked to be no more than eighteen, with her whole life to face with a mouth that could never pronounce her thoughts.
Tommy looked around for help but Rae was frozen in the wings, as surprised as he was, and the choir, who doubled as security and general calmer-downers as well as the catchers of his healing thrusts, were standing there mesmerized, their tambourines dangling. The deacon was only now beginning to stir, but it would take him far too long to get to the girl and get her out of the way. This creature was just too pretty for the audience to dismiss and forget about. They wanted her by God cured and no nonsense, and Tommy could feel the force of their demand as he crossed to the edge of the stage.
She held her arms up to him as if offering herself to a saint. Tommy started to kneel down to her, hoping to work something out of sight of most of the audience, but she grabbed his arm and pulled herself up onstage, giving him no choice but to make it look as if that was what he wanted. Short of kicking her back into the audience, there was no way out but to deal with her.
"Heal me, Reverend Tommy, I know you can. I know you can," she said, or some such garble. Tommy could hear the audience "awwing" in sympathy with her defect.
The poor young thing, they thought, and so pretty, too.
"I am going to heal you, sister," Tommy said loudly.
She started to make some more noise, but Tommy clamped his hands on her face, closing her jaw to shut her up. She was just as beautiful up close, and even in the midst of his panic Tommy wondered if he couldn't just kiss her back to health right here and now.
The Reverend Tommy was about to say that he was more than willing to heal her once he got to the healing portion of the show when she winked at him.
Startled, Tommy reflexively yelled, "Satan be gone!" and pushed the girl away from him and off — the stage, forgetting in his astonishment that his catchers were not yet in place.
The girl was nimble and landed on her feet but staggered a bit and doubled over as if caught in a seizure of some sort. Her body quivered a bit and for a second TOMMY wondered if he had done her some sort of neurological damage. But it was her fault, scaring him that way. What was she thinking of.?
Amid a great hush, the girl slowly straightened up.
Tommy thought of leaping back into his preaching to cover up whatever devilment came out of her mouth now, but he knew the audience would not forgive him if he did.