It started then with a kind of moan, a wail, even while the crowds of spectators who had followed them out here filed still past the ticket booth, dropping their dollars. There was thunder. The wheel of the numbers game revolved with a purring flutter. Semicircling Marcella, but each with a view of the east, the Brunists knelt. The wail mounted. Popcorn flup-flup-flupped in the lit-up popping cage. A woman laughed. On the hill, a long dramatic prayer was commenced, led alternatively by Clara Collins and Abner Baxter and a plump man with a vibrant voice who Miller learned was a Mr. Hiram Clegg from some town nearby, the man he’d seen pulling Emilia’s wagon. Everyone joined in, echoing parts, chorusing familiar responses, all of it a kind of contest of Biblical knowledge and appropriate responsive ritual. Most of the new ones, apparently, were types like those of the local Church of the Nazarene; the Nortons seemed very isolated indeed. In fact, now that he thought of it, where was Himebaugh? Poor bastard didn’t have it, after all.
It was growing dark, more from the clouding over than from the approach of night, but Fisher had strung lights down along the row of booths, and now the cameramen were setting up their own lamps, electricity apparently provided by the mine. Miller wandered to the eastern edge of the carnival area, found Mickey DeMars there dispensing soft drinks.
“H’lo, Tiger!” Mick squeaked. “Say, you’re looking a little peaked. You been getting enough sleep?”
“What’ve you got back there, Mick?”
“Jim Beam or Canadian.”
“Either one.”
“Say, you seen Lou?”
“No.”
“Well, you never believe it, but the bastard’s out here!”
“I believe it, Mick.” He tossed the drink down, looked up at the soles of Marcella’s blue feet. Then, suddenly remembering, he reached in his trenchcoat pocket; his fingers closed around a small cotton sock. Beyond the Brunists, over the far edge of the hill, he could see the tops of trees, then the upper flight of the tipple and the watertower with its DEEPWATER banner, thrust fatly up like a carburetor advertisement. Beyond that, a motion in the skies of mixed grays, like a photograph taking shape: photograph of a young brown-eyed girl in a shawl, the shawl slipping to her shoulders … and he saw then that he was one with the Brunists: that he, too, had been brought full circle to stand upon this place….
We were gathered on the Mount of Redemption
On the night before the Coming of the Light,
Seeking peace and the path of Salvation,
But hate and fear made a horror of that night!
In faith, she came running out to save us;
In faith, she came out to end our strife;
And, with her hand pointing upward unto Heaven,
In faith, she laid down her precious life!
So, hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!
Yes, hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!
We have gathered at the Mount of Redemption
To meet our dear Lord here face to face!
He saw some of the clutch approaching, Cavanaugh, Whimple, Elliott and others, so he paid Mick and left. He had to pass by them, but they either missed him or intentionally ignored him. On the hill, the prayer meeting was getting louder, and Clara and Baxter were whipping the crowd up with challenges.
“Do you believe?”
“Yes! Oh Lord! Yes, we believe!”
“Does He come?”
“He comes! Yes! Now!”
“Are you ready?”
“Ready, Lord! Amen! God save us! Come!”
Severe rumbles in the sky now. Clara Collins gazed upward, lifted her fist and cried out, and they all mimed her. What power that woman had! Miller noticed she was wearing Ellie Norton’s gold medallion: a mysterious occult talisman on Eleanor, it became a flashing badge of hegemony on Clara. Could he go directly to her? Probably not. Not today. He looked for Betty Wilson, spied her on her knees between a woman even fatter than herself and the man named Clegg. Down here, the crowds were multiplying by the minute, now packed the tents and booths, and swarmed densely at the base of the hill. Though amused, often giggling pointlessly, chewing gum and popcorn with exaggerated jaw motions, getting into friendly scuffles, they nevertheless seemed disinclined to aim taunts directly at the Brunists. Maybe they were afraid to. There were close to four hundred excited people up on that hill. Or maybe it was just the way they’d been brought up. This was a religious service, after all, screwball or not, and what derision could one properly hurl at a man who prayed to the Christian God? They, too, had prayed, sung, confessed. Yet, they yearned to storm that hill, Miller could feel it, they ached to obliterate that white fungus, they were hate hungry and here was something to hit out at. They waited for: the outrage.
Miller slipped into the bingo tent, arranging himself with a view out at the hill. Crowds in front of him, but the hill rose above them. He looked for Jones. Preferred to settle that business first. People pushed into the tent in fear of rain, people pushed out to take another look, jostling him. Finally, he moved back into one empty corner, took a folding chair, and cut away a flap of canvas for a window. “Under the I: 28!” Up on the hill, Bruno paced silently among his followers, stopping once or twice to kiss the withered forehead of his old mother, she still heaped in a sickly little mound in the wagon. The man seemed suddenly this afternoon to have acquired tremendous energy, moved with assurance and even a kind of ferocity. “Under the O: 69!” Ripple of giggles. Outside, they were giggling at a couple who had stripped off their streetclothes to stand with the Brunists in their white underwear. And, just in front of him through the flap, he saw a fat lady giggle when someone handed her a bag of buttered popcorn. “Under the B: 9!” Bruno, he noticed, repeated a peculiar gesture several times: the raising of his hand in a kind of benediction and the placing of it on a person’s shoulder. At first, Miller supposed it was a way of giving encouragement, but then he observed that those least in need of it, received it: Eleanor, Baxter, Clara, Wosznik. “Under the B: 12!”
And then it began to rain. A cloudburst. The crowds shrieked, laughed like children at a party, pressed back against the small booths and tents, pushing for shelter. Up on the hill, the Brunists seemed to take cheer. They smiled down condescendingly upon the turmoil below them, then lifted their eyes and hands to the exploding heavens. The harder it rained, the more ecstatic they became, the more violent became the crowds at the base. Distantly, he heard the emcee calling out the bingo numbers, but could no longer distinguish them. Half-consciously he’d been waiting for 7 or 14, and knew now he’d never hear it. Behind the downpour, bullish thunder stampeded and trumpeted. Amateur photographers added their Brownies and Polaroids to the one-eyed host that encircled the worshipers, conspiring to nail them forever to this time and place, and Miller noticed that the one thing that drew the crowd’s attention from the hill were the instant copies of the Polaroid cameras, exciting them even more than watching the real thing.
The rain roared on the tent, thunder crashed, the crowds screamed and shouted, now laughing less. A fight broke out in front of him, a nose was bloodied, a face pushed in the mud. Up on the Mount, people leaped up in the air as though trying to fly, ran about, rolled in the mud. Streetclothes were shed and so, in some cases, was underwear. Some of the spectators caught out in the rain screamed at that, some laughed, some only shouted meaninglessly. People pushed up against the tent, buckling its sides inward and blocking Miller’s view, showing him nothing but dark wet bodies, hands feeling haunches, elbows swinging.