he’d grown, but his gaunt face tattled the truth. There were other truths there, as well. I think most people who have suffered great losses in their lives—great tragedies—come to a crossroads. Maybe not right then, but when the shock wears off. It may be months later; it may be years. They either expand as a result of their experience, or they contract. If that sounds New Age-y—and I suppose it does—I don’t apologize. I know what I’m talking about.
Charles Jacobs had contracted. His mouth was a pale line. His blue eyes blazed, but they were caught in nets of wrinkles and looked smaller. Shielded, somehow. The cheerful young man who had helped me make caves in Skull Mountain when I was six, the man who had listened with such kindliness when I told him how Con had gone mute . . . that man now looked like an old-time New England schoolmaster about to birch a recalcitrant pupil.
Then he smiled, and I could at least hope the young guy who had befriended me was still somewhere inside this carny-show gospel shouter. That smile lit up his whole face. The crowd applauded. Partly out of relief, I think. He raised his hands, then lowered them with the palms down. “Sit, brothers and sisters. Sit, boys and girls. Let us take fellowship, one with the other.”
They sat in a great rustling swoosh. The tent grew quiet. Every eye was upon him.
“I bring you good news that you have heard before: God loves you. Yes, every one of you. Those who’ve lived upright lives and those who are neck-deep in sin. He so loved you that he gave His only begotten son—John three: sixteen. On the eve of his crucifixion, His son prayed that you should be kept from evil—John seventeen: fifteen. When God corrects, when He gives us burdens and afflictions, he does so in love—Acts seventeen: eleven. And can he not lift those burdens and afflictions in that same spirit of love?”
“Yes, praise God!” came an exultant shout from Wheelchair Row.
“I stand before you, a wanderer on the face of America, and a vessel of God’s love. Will you accept me, as I accept you?”
They shouted they would. Sweat was rolling down my face, and Hugh’s, and the faces of those on either side of us, but Jacobs’s face was dry and shining, although the spotlight he stood in had to make the air around him even hotter. Add to that the black coat.
“Once I was married, and had a little boy,” he said. “There was a terrible accident, and they drowned.”
It was like a splash of cold water in my face. Here was a lie when there was no reason to lie, at least none that I could see.
The audience murmured—almost moaned. Many of the women were crying, and a few of the men, as well.
“I turned my face from God then, and cursed Him in my heart. I wandered in the wilderness. Oh, it was New York, and Chicago, and Tulsa, and Joplin, and Dallas, and Tijuana; it was Portland Maine and Portland Oregon, but it was all the same, all the wilderness. I wandered from God, but I never wandered from the memory of my wife and my little boy. I put off the teachings of Jesus, but I never put off this.”
He raised his left hand, displaying a gold band that seemed too wide and thick to be an ordinary wedding ring.
“I was tempted by women—of course I was, I’m a man, and Potiphar’s wife is always among us—but I stayed true.”
“Praise God!” a woman shouted. One who probably thought she’d know a Potiphar’s wife if she ever saw that hotbox harlot in matron’s clothing.
“And then one day, after refusing such a temptation that was unusually severe . . . unusually seductive . . . I had a revelation from God even as did Saul, on the road to Damascus.”
“God’s word!” a man shouted, lifting his hands heavenward (top-of-the-tentward, at least).
“God told me I had work, and that my work would be to lift the burdens and afflictions of others. He came to me in a dream and told me to put on another ring, one that would signify my marriage to the teachings of God through His Holy Word and the teachings of His son, Jesus Christ. I was in Phoenix then, working in a godless carnival show, and God told me to walk into the desert without food and water, like any Old Testament