Praise His holy name!”
She tottered to her husband, holding her arms out to keep her balance, and weeping. An usher in a green vest pushed her wheelchair close behind her in case her legs gave way . . . but they didn’t.
It went on for an hour. The music never stopped, nor did the ushers with the deep offering baskets. Jacobs didn’t heal everybody, but I can tell you that his collection crew stripped those rubes right down to their no doubt maxed-out credit cards. Many of the Wheelchair Brigade were unable to rise after being touched by the holy rings, but half a dozen of them did. I wrote down all the names, crossing out those who seemed as fucked over after Jacobs’s healing touch as before.
There was a woman with cataracts who declared she could see, and under the bright lights, the milky glaze really did appear to have left her eyes. A crooked arm was made straight. A wailing baby with some sort of heart defect stopped crying as if a switch had been turned off. A man who approached on Canadian crutches, his head bent, tore off the neck brace he was wearing and cast the crutches aside. A woman suffering from advanced COPD dropped her oxygen mask. She declared that she could breathe freely and the weight on her chest was gone.
Many of the cures were impossible to quantify, and it was very possible some were plants. The man with ulcers who declared his stomach pain was gone for the first time in three years, for instance. Or the woman with diabetes—one leg amputated below the knee—who said she could feel her hands and remaining toes again. A couple of chronic migraine sufferers who testified that their pain was gone, praise God, all gone.
I wrote the names down, anyway, and—when they gave them—the towns and states they hailed from. Bree Donlin was good, she had gotten interested in the project, and I wanted to give her as much to work with as possible.
Jacobs only removed one tumor that night, and that fellow’s name I didn’t even consider writing down, because I saw one of Jacobs’s hands dart into the gag-jacket before he applied his magic rings. What he displayed to the gasping, rapturous audience looked suspiciously like supermarket calves’ liver to me. He gave it to one of the green-vests, who popped it into a jar and hustled it out of sight posthaste.
At last Jacobs declared the healing touch exhausted for the night. I don’t know about that, but he certainly looked exhausted. Done to death, in fact. His face was still dry, but the front of his shirt was sticking to his chest. When he stepped back from the reluctantly dispersing faithful who hadn’t gotten a chance (many would undoubtedly follow him to his next revival meeting), he stumbled. Al Stamper was there to grab him, and this time Jacobs accepted the help.
“Let us pray,” Jacobs said. He was having a hard time catching his breath, and I couldn’t help worrying that he might faint or go into cardiac arrest right there. “Let us offer our thanks to God, as we offer our burdens to Him. After that, brothers and sisters, Al and Devina and the Gospel Robins will see us out in song.”
This time he didn’t attempt kneeling, but the congregation did, including a few who had probably never expected to kneel again in their earthly lives. There was that airy swoosh of clothes, and it almost covered the gagging noises from beside me. I turned just in time to see the back of Hugh’s plaid shirt disappearing between the flaps at the entrance to the tent.
• • •
I found him standing beneath a pole light fifteen feet away, bent double and grasping his knees. The night had cooled considerably, and the puddle between his feet was steaming lightly. As I approached, his body heaved and the puddle grew larger. When I touched his arm, he jerked and stumbled, almost falling into his own vomit, which would have made for a fragrant ride home.
The panicky gaze he turned on me was that of an animal caught in a forest fire. Then he relaxed and straightened up, pulling an old-fashioned rancher’s bandanna from his back pocket. He wiped his mouth with it. His hand was trembling. His face was dead white. Some of that was undoubtedly because of the harsh glare thrown by the pole light, but not all.
“Sorry, Jamie. You startled me.”
“I noticed.”
“It