Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (6 page)

Juliana didn’t understand what the preacher was saying, but lots of people in the
crowd started making similar nonsense words.  Some waved their hands high and closed
their eyes, while others went into convulsions, crashing into those around them and
finally flopping on the dirt like dying fish.  Many of them simply screamed or howled. 
She didn’t know what to think as the crowd seemed to turn rabid.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” A hand seized Juliana’s arm, and she gasped.  It was the woman
from the wagon, with kids and husband in tow.  The husband carried the boy with the
crippled leg.  With the heavy crowd, Juliana hadn’t penetrated far into the tent,
and now the family had caught up with her.

Juliana looked down at where the woman clutched her—fortunately, her sleeve protected
the woman from a rapid, painful death, but Juliana didn’t feel comfortable about it.

“Is this the preacher does the healing?” the husband asked.  He bounced the little
boy in his arms, and the boy cried out in glee. 

“Is he?” the woman asked Juliana.

“I don’t know,” Juliana answered. “I hope so.”

The preacher went on and on, getting louder, stomping the stage, sending the crowd
into hysterics.  The kids from the wagon joined the rest of the audience in screaming,
howling, and flopping around, except for the smallest boy, who just watched from his
father’s shoulder, unable to join the fun.

Juliana couldn’t believe how long the preacher continued.  The sound of rain battered
the tent top, and people drenched from the downpour pushed their way into the packed
tent.  Soon the crowd was twice as large, and the air in the tent turned steamy and
foul with the odor of so many bodies.

After a long, long time, and much more speaking in tongues, the first preacher finally
staggered offstage, exhausted, while the audience cried and clapped. 

A tall, gaunt man carried a woven basket onstage, followed by three other men.  From
their look and their ragged clothes, Juliana thought they might be mountain people. 
The gaunt man addressed the audience while the other three lingered behind him.

“The Lord says, if we have faith, we may take up serpents without fear,” the man told
the crowd. “For even the sting of the serpent is nothing next to the power of God.”

The audience chattered excitedly.

“We have come to show the power of faith as a testimony.” He lifted the lid from the
woven basket, and the crowd pushed forward to see. “For the tempter comes in the form
of a serpent, hissing lies into our ears...But we show him that only the Lord is our
master!”

From the basket, he lifted out a pair of thick, long rattlesnakes, one in each hand,
both of them shaking out a warning with their tails.  Screams erupted from the audience,
and a number of people near the front tried to push their way back, by they were trapped
in place by the rest of the crowd.

The gaunt man stalked slowly across the front lip of the stage, holding out his arms
while the deadly rattlers coiled around him.  The crowd gasped and shrieked.

Behind him, his three cohorts approached the basket one by one, each taking one or
two rattlesnakes and letting them wrap around their arms and necks.

Juliana’s heartbeat raced as she watched, waiting for one of them to suffer a fatal
bite.  In the carnival, the show would have been a fraud—the snakes would be a harmless
species that only looked dangerous, most likely, or their venom would have been removed—but
she’d heard that the snake-handling preachers used fully lethal wild snakes.

The children stopped playing at flopping and fainting, and they watched quietly, eyes
wide open.  The whole tent had gone from boisterous to silent.  In the silence, the
gaunt preacher’s voice seemed to echo back from the canvas walls.

“Faith is not some small thing we do once a week,” he said. “We must hold faith inside
of us all times.  With faith, there is no danger, for there is no door through which
Satan can enter.  Close your hearts against evil, and open them to the Lord!” 

Voices whispered throughout the crowd as the largest rattlesnake nosed its way up
the preacher’s neck and cheek, its forked tongue tasting his ear.

“We have no need to fear,” he continued. “God has already vanquished the devil, and
He will do it again, and there will be a final Judgment.  If the Lord chooses to take
us today, or ten years from now, or a hundred years from now, it’s all the same...we’re
all going to face Him, we’re all going to answer for our sins...and there will be
a reckoning!” He thrust a fist into the air to make his point, startling the rattlesnake,
which drew back and opened its jaw, poised to bite his face.

The preacher fell still and quiet, looking right back into the snake’s eyes.

“Go ahead,” he said in a loud stage whisper. “Go ahead and try, Satan.  God is with
me.  I’m filled with the Spirit and the light.”

The entire audience stayed silent.  After a minute, the rattlesnake relaxed and turned
away, crawling back down his arm.  The preacher resumed his sermon, while his three
acolytes walked to different areas of the stage, letting the audience see the snakes
in their hands.

He spoke on and on, like the previous preacher.  As he wrapped up, the three men returned
their snakes to the basket and picked up buckets on long rods.  They held these out
to the audience, collecting coins and cash from the stunned crowd.

The next preacher was a different sort.  He wore an odd pastel-colored suit, and his
dark, curly head of hair looked like a wig to Juliana, because it didn’t quite match
his handlebar mustache.  He was followed  by a chorus of three young women wearing
high-neck dresses and no makeup, who stood together at one corner of the stage.  Behind
him, a black man in a green snap-brim hat and matching suit took over the piano.

The preacher walked to stage center, looking around, apprising the crowd, with the
automatic bright smile of an experienced showman.

“I hope this is him,” the woman from the wagon said. “I’m exhausted.” Night had fallen,
and the rain hadn’t let up, so the tent remained crowded and humid.  Everyone was
sweating.  Juliana worried that her sweat might fall on somebody, like one of the
two children who insisted on staying close to their pet carnival girl.  She didn’t
know whether her sweat could harm anyone, and she certainly didn’t want to find out
the hard way.

“He don’t look no healer to me,” commented the woman’s husband, Henry.

“I’m sleepy,” their little girl complained.

“I want to play with snakes!” the older boy announced.

“Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, let us pray,” the preacher finally said. 
Nobody was going to argue with that, so everyone lowered their heads and closed their
eyes, and many grasped the hands of the people around them.  The little girl, Izzy
May, grasped Juliana’s gloved hand and wouldn’t let go, which made Juliana edgy and
nervous.

“...as Your wonders are limitless, oh Lord, we beseech you to bless this humble house
of worship with Your grace today.  As Your Son healed the blind and the sick, we ask
that You pour Your love upon our brothers and sisters here, those who are in need,
those are ill, those who live in pain...”

Juliana opened her eyes and looked up.  Maybe this was the healing preacher, after
all.  If so, he didn’t inspire much confidence.

“Amen,” the preacher eventually said, and many people echoed him. “Children of the
Lord, we have been called together for a great purpose today,” he began. “And that
purpose is to recognize the Lord’s place in our lives...”  As he spoke, the piano
player went to work, providing a backdrop of fast, punchy notes that helped rouse
the crowd as the preacher continued.  Soon the preacher was keyed up, racing around
the stage. “...and when trouble arrives, what do we say?  We say oh, precious Lord,
take my hand!”

This was the cue for the three women to sing the hymn ‘Oh, Precious Lord, Take My
Hand,’ a hymn which a lot of the crowd seemed to know, because they sang along.  The
piano player immediately switched from his jazzy melody to a deeper gospel sound.

When the song ended, the preacher resumed strutting up and down the stage, talking
up the healing powers of God and recalling the stories about Jesus and the lepers. 
He grew more and more animated, slapping his hands together and stomping his foot
for emphasis.

“Hallelujah!  I feel the Spirit!” cried out one of his chorus girls.  She closed her
eyes as if in ecstasy and brushed her hands from her bosom down to her hips. “It’s
in me!” She moaned and toppled backwards.  The audience gasped as the two other girls
scrambled to catch her.  It looked like a rehearsed move to Juliana, but she supposed
most of the crowd hadn’t seen five years’ worth of midway tricks.

This inspired people in the crowd to scream and squirm in response. The punchy piano
music accelerated, and the writhing and screaming spread through the tent.

Juliana frowned.  She doubted this man was anything but a big talker who knew how
to sway a crowd.  She was beginning to feel stupid for coming to the revival, like
just another mark who couldn’t see the game.

“I know why many of you are here tonight,” the preacher said. “Word gets around, don’t
it, about the wonders of the Lord that unfold right here, in this very tent?  I’ve
heard people say I can cure the blind, heal the sick, chase out the demons of illness.” 
Many of the crowd shouted excitedly. “They say I can take a crippled man and make
him walk, that I can cast out all manner of pox and measles.”  The crowd grew more
excited, and many began trying to push their way to the front.

Juliana tensed.  This was it, the alleged healing part of the show.

“Those folks are plain wrong!” the preacher shouted. “I’m just a simple country preacher. 
It’s the Lord that heals!  It’s the Spirit that heals the sick and the suffering little
children, and the lepers and all of ‘em!  I am just a humble vessel of the Lord, that’s
all!”

The crowd roared their enthusiastic response.

The preacher’s assistant brought up a man with his arm in a sling.  The preacher prayed,
danced around, and laid his hands on the broken arm.  The man took off the sling and
waved the bandaged arm at the crowd, grinning, and the crowd shouted things like “Hallelujah!”
and “Praise the Lord!”  There was no way to tell whether he was a shill or not.

The family with the polio-stricken boy was trying to push their way to the stage,
but the thick crowd wasn’t budging.  Juliana decided to let the little boy’s leg be
her test of whether the healing was real.  She jumped in front of the family.

“Crippled boy, coming through!” she shouted. “Let us through, he’s crippled!  Please!” 
She did her best to look sad, pulling out every carnival trick she knew.  A few people
eased aside, but they didn’t get far, so she raised the stakes. “Dying boy!  Look
out, this boy’s going to die right now!  Help this dying boy reach the stage!”

More people took an interest now, and some even helped out, passing the word along
and urging others to step aside.  She kept repeating her plea as she advanced, opening
a narrow path for the family, who followed right behind her.

She kept up her patter until they reached the very edge of the stage, where the father
was able to pass the little boy to the preacher’s assistant, who carried him over
to the preacher.  His parents watched, the father hard-eyed and skeptical, the mother
full of hope.

Juliana crossed her arms and waited to see whether a miracle would happen.

“Oh, yes, this boy’s been stricken, all right,” the preacher said.  “Sick leg, does
everyone see that?  The boy cannot walk!” The preacher’s assistant held the boy out
for the crowd to see, then turned him toward the preacher, who said, “But the Lord
is merciful, and offers us hope.  Tell me, boy, do you love the Lord?”

“Yes,” the boy answered, in a small voice.

“And the Lord loves you, too.  And we can ask Him for the great gift of healing, we
can ask for His blessing...” The preacher danced around the stage a little, then shouted,
“Demon of affliction, I cast thee out!  Go back to the fires of damnation from which
you rose!” He slapped the boy’s leg, hard enough that Juliana jumped in surprise and
the boy’s mother cried out.

The assistant turned the boy to face the audience again and held him up high.  Beneath
his overalls, which were cut off at the knees, everyone could see that both his legs
appeared perfectly healthy.  The crowd gasped.

The assistant lowered the boy to his feet.  He looked off-balance for a moment, then
finally took a chance and put his weight on his newly healed leg.  A smile burst across
his face, and his mother cried out again.

“Healed, praise the Lord!” the preacher said. “God is in this tent with us today,
ain’t He?”

The crowd roared that yes, He was, while the assistant carried the boy back to the
side of the stage and handed him back to his shocked father and weeping mother.  Juliana
immediately stepped forward and grabbed the assistant’s sleeve.

“Me next,” Juliana told him.

The assistant looked at her.  She hadn’t paid much attention to him before, focusing
on the preacher like everyone else.  The assistant wasn’t much older than her, and
he was handsome despite his scratchy, fuzzy attempt at growing a beard.  His intense
blue eyes took her in, and something fluttered in her stomach.