pilgrim on the face of the land. He told me that in the wilderness I would find the ring of my second and final marriage. He told me if I remained true to that marriage, I would do great good, and be reunited with my wife and son in heaven, and our true marriage would be re-consecrated by His holy throne, and in His holy light.”
There were more cries and ejaculations. A woman in a trim business suit, tan hose, and stylish low heels fell into the aisle and began to testify in a language that seemed solely comprised of vowels. The man with her—husband or boyfriend—knelt beside her, pillowing her head with his hands, smiling tenderly, urging her on.
“He doesn’t believe a word of it,” I said. I was astounded. “Every word is a lie. They must see that.”
But they didn’t, and Hugh didn’t hear me. He was staring, transfixed. The tent was a tumult of gladness, Jacobs’s voice rising above it, pounding through the hosannas by the grace of electricity (and a cordless mike).
“All day I walked. I found food someone had left in a trashbin at a rest area, and ate it. I found half a bottle of Co’cola beside the trail, and drank it. Then God told me to leave the path, and although it was coming on to dark by then, and better trailhands than me have died in that desert, I did as he said.”
Must have been all the way out in the suburbs by then, I thought. Maybe all the way to North Scottsdale, where the rich folks live.
“The night was dark with clouds, not a star to be seen. But just after midnight, those clouds parted and a ray of moonlight shone down on a pile of rocks. I went to them, and beneath it, I found . . . this.”
He held up his right hand. On the third finger was another thick gold band. The audience burst into applause and hallelujahs. I kept trying to make sense of it, and kept coming up short. Here were people who routinely used their computers to stay in touch with their friends and get the news of the day, people who took weather satellites and lung transplants for granted, people who expected to live lives thirty and forty years longer than those of their great-grandparents. Here they were, falling for a story that made Santa and the Tooth Fairy look like gritty realism. He was feeding them shit and they were loving it. I had the dismaying idea that he was loving it, too, and that was worse. This was not the man I’d known in Harlow, or the one who had taken me in that night in Tulsa. Although when I thought of how he had treated Cathy Morse’s bewildered and brokenhearted farmer father, I had to admit this man had been on the way even then.
I don’t know if he hates these people, I thought, but he holds them in contempt.
Or maybe not. Maybe he just didn’t care. Except for what was in the collection basket at the end of the show, that was.
Meanwhile, he was continuing his testimony. The band had begun to play as he spoke, whipping the crowd up even further. The Gospel Robins were swaying and clapping, and the audience joined in.
Jacobs talked about his first hesitant healings with the rings of his two marriages—the secular and the sacred. About his realization that God wanted him to bring His message of love and healing to a wider audience. His repeated declarations—kneebound and agonized—that he wasn’t worthy. God replying that He never would have endowed him with the rings if that were true. Jacobs made it sound as if he and God had had long conversations about these matters in some celestial smoking room, perhaps puffing pipes and looking out at the rolling hills of heaven.
I hated the way he looked now—that narrow schoolmaster’s face and the blue glare of his eyes. I hated the black coat, too. Carnies call that kind of coat a gag-jacket. I had learned as much working Jacobs’s Portraits in Lightning gaff at Bell’s Amusement Park.
“Join me in prayer, won’t you?” Jacobs asked, and fell to his knees with what looked like a brief squint of pain. Rheumatism? Arthritis? Pastor Danny, heal thyself, I thought.
The congregation went to its knees in another vast swoosh of clothes and exalted murmurs. Those of us standing at the back of the tent did likewise. I almost resisted—even