Ollie's Cloud (34 page)

Chapter 26

How he had lucked into such a pleasant circumstance he cannot begin to fathom, but six years of living on garbage, sharing cold and filthy quarters with ravenous rats, and suffering the abuse of “employers” such as the scumbags arrested on the pier—these life experiences have taught the newsboy not to question any good fortune. And here he is, sleeping on a plump mattress with fresh linens, embraced by the lusty fragrance of fresh-baked bread. The spectacular tragedy of the harbor, which now seems like a century ago, curiously has become his bounty, as if there has been a sudden warp in life’s system of balance that allows his startling good fortune to have been paid in advance by the misfortune of others. Kind of like Jesus paying for the sins of humankind by dying on the cross.

The newsboy feels untethered from his old fate. Born again!

He remembers the Bible stories that the somber evangelicals in the Five Points Gospel Mission forced him to endure before ladling out their thin soup into chipped bowls. One of these tales, the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, had seemed silly at the time. But now the newsboy can relate to Abraham’s son, Isaac, for whom he was undoubtedly named, and the tremendous relief that Abraham’s son must have felt when God decided that His thirst for blood could be slaked by a slaughtered ram. Had not everything changed for Isaac in that quirky moment? Why should it not also change for Isaac the urchin?

The delicious aroma of bread pulls him from bed, urges him out of his pajamas—
imagine that, clean pajamas!
—and into a pair of fine woolen trousers, an ironed cotton shirt, and sleek leather boots. He looks down at his clothes, and as he has been every day for the past two weeks, he is still astonished to find no patches and stains, no gaping holes, not a single missing button. He runs a boar’s bristle brush through his black locks—once a snarled nest of matted hair, straw and vermin—and finds them beautifully shorn to a fashionable length and style.

The bread beckons, and Isaac gallops down the creaking staircase to the kitchen where he finds Mrs. Rogers at work on a breakfast of tea, sausages and potatoes.

Ollie looks up with a gleaming eye and sees the boy in the doorway. Good morning to you son, he says, and then he is back to his craft of finely rasping a pair of rolls to a perfect smoothness. Just like when I was in school, he adds, I was the supreme toaster, no one finer in all of London. And then he smears the rolls with a glaze of butter, and over the coals of the pot-bellied stove toasts the rolls to a uniform golden-brown hue. Food for the gods, he says.

Isaac finds himself swathed in the warmth of the kitchen and stuffing himself on a home-made breakfast that is even better than yesterday’s. He imagines that Mrs. Rogers is his grandmother, or a saint, or possibly both, and she feeds his fantasy with fried potatoes and hugs. He knows about the old woman’s loss, and knows that once again he is the beneficiary of someone else’s misery with a heavy price paid in advance. He hopes that his presence helps fill her void as well.

We must get the boy into a good school, Ollie is saying to Mrs. Rogers, no matter what the cost. I agree, the old woman replies, the lad is bright. Yes he is. And then Ollie is looking at the boy and smiling. Do you want to stay here with us, Ollie is asking, and Isaac, mouth stuffed full of toasted roll, nods yes with wide eyes and leaping heart. Then I must attend to some matters, Ollie says, turning to Mrs. Rogers, such as informing the authorities and making the arrangement, shall we say, a legal one. Is it possible? When money changes hands, everything is possible.

Is this what a family feels like, Isaac wonders, never having experienced such a thing, and then he is saying aloud, Can I stay here then? Of course, dear, Mrs. Rogers replies. For how long? How long would you like? A long time. Then a long time it shall be.

With a pat on Isaac’s shoulder Ollie bounds out the door. To make things right, he says. Ollie is an odd one, moody at times, such as when the subject of God comes up. No talking about God, he will say, or Jesus. Most of the other civilized adults in Isaac’s life went on and on about God this and God that, as if the whole purpose of life was to know God and what he intended for you to do. But Ollie grows angry at the subject of God, or religion, or priests or ministers. You don’t know God, he will say, and then steam will pour out of his ears. Isaac can still hear Ollie’s piercing condemnation of God in the wind, and he supposes that the death of Ann Chadwick has something to do with Ollie’s anger. Because he wants Ollie to be happy, Isaac never mentions God or religion when Ollie is around—not that he would otherwise. The boy has never had time for such nonsense, not when physical survival was the only thing that mattered.

But now he wonders if there is a God. Not that he would ask Ollie.

Two weeks later Isaac is enrolled at Lenox, a private boy’s day school. Ollie takes him there and Isaac is proud to hear this strong proper gentleman announce to the stodgy principal that he is Isaac’s guardian. The term has a legal ring to it, and Isaac wonders if this is what Ollie meant by
making things right
.

Guardian. The term makes Isaac feel protected.

Don’t worry, Ollie tells Isaac as he leaves the boy there, no one will know anything about you here. Okay. A carriage will pick you up every day after school. Okay.

The subjects at school are difficult, especially for a boy with no formal education, and Isaac is afraid that failure will mean banishment to the streets.
Wouldn’t that be a fitting way for life to rebalance the scales? And Ollie would certainly have a perfect right, as an agent of life’s system of balance, to correct the wrong.
So Isaac spends his evenings learning to read and write.

Mrs. Rogers and Ollie and Jonathon are amazed at Isaac’s hunger for knowledge, not understanding the fear that motivates the boy.

The many evenings spent learning with his guardian binds Isaac closer to Ollie. Isaac is fascinated by the letters that Ollie writes to Herbert Eaton in London, and the letters he receives in return. The idea of having someone in a distant place who is interested in your life seems so… What’s the word, Isaac? So
exotic
. Can you spell it? E-X-O… Keep going. Is Herbert your father? He’s my guardian; you see I have a guardian too. He looks after you then? He comforts me with his words, but he is suffering terribly now because the love of his life has died and so it is my turn to comfort him.

One night Jonathon says to Ollie, I’m so glad we’re working at last. Yes, it’s good, isn’t it? When Isaac asks what work they are doing, Ollie remains silent but Jonathon says, Ollie’s writing a series of newspaper articles on American Revivalism in New York City for the
London Times
, with pictures by yours truly. The
fraud
of Revivalism.

By spring the series is nearly finished, and so is Isaac’s first year of school. One evening, as Isaac studies a well-worn text book in the front room of the boarding house, Ollie approaches him and closes the book on Isaac’s lap. I have something very important to talk to you about, he says to Isaac. What is it? I was wondering if maybe, perhaps, you would like to make our arrangement more permanent. But you’re already my guardian, isn’t that permanent? Yes but a guardian is one thing and a father is quite another. You mean—adopt me? Yes, that’s what I mean, what would you think?

Two weeks later Isaac becomes Ollie’s son and legal heir. For Isaac, heir means nothing but son means everything. On this same day Ollie announces that he must leave for a few weeks, perhaps a few months, to continue the series of articles.

But you’ve written everything there is to write about Revivalism in New York City, Isaac says. Do you really have to go? I have a mission to complete, the very reason in fact that I came to this country. Will you write to me then, Father?

The word
father
stabs Ollie unexpectedly
.
He had come to New York City as someone’s son, and he is now leaving as someone’s father. I’ll write often, he says, embracing Isaac.

On a cloudy Sunday morning Ollie and Jonathon pack their carriage and head off down Nassau Street for the wilderness of New York State.

Chapter 27

It is not hard to find camp-meetings in New York State. As Ollie and Jonathon travel from one to another, they can see why this broad expanse between the Atlantic and Lake Ontario is called the
Burnt-Over District
; roving revivalists have raked this batch of sinners over the coals of hell’s fire so many times that people here are no longer converted but
re-converted
out of fear that the first or third or sixth time didn’t take. Like an overworked farm field, this once-fertile spiritual territory would have been depleted of new Christian prospects if it were not for the compost-heap of Adventism, as Ollie sees it. William Miller’s schedule for the End of the World has given the evangelists what they needed most, a ticking clock, and with it they are growing one more bumper crop of repentants ripe for harvesting.

Ollie cannot bear the lies of God’s agents, the preachers; or the smug righteousness of the hymns; or the gullibility of the audiences; or neuroticism celebrated as a spiritual gift. He sees it all as a fraud hoisted upon humanity and he seeks to call it out, or at least disrupt its influence, until people can see God for what He really is—a devious, vindictive, capricious Being who finds amusement in the pain and suffering for which He created mankind. Every exhortation shouted by the master manipulators behind the pulpits, each
Hallelujah
and
Glory
erupting from the mouths of the misled, every tear and heartfelt plea for mercy from a merciless God—all of this fans Ollie’s passion for exposing the hoax of religion.

Jonathon sees Ollie’s torment, which had first manifested during a local event. While one preacher had been urging repentants to come forward that they might be saved from eternal damnation, Ollie suddenly had stood up and shouted for the preacher to ask God’s forgiveness, and his wife’s, for his affair with the pianist. From the evangelist’s sudden embarrassment and the intense flush of the pianist’s face—which was almost as red as Jonathon’s hair—the charge had seemed credible. Having successfully shattered the fragile moment, Ollie had identified himself as a reporter for the
London Times
and asked for an interview. The preacher had abruptly left the pulpit and the sinners in the audience had been left to deal with the Almighty on their own, although some had been seen retrieving their “love offering” from the collection bucket.

When Jonathon had asked how Ollie had learned about the affair, Ollie had merely said, “I have my great-grandmother’s gift.” From that moment, Jonathon had known that the camp-meetings they attended were not selected at random.

Disruptions at subsequent venues had taken other forms, and if it were not for the sly smile that creased Ollie’s face during such upheavals Jonathon would not have suspected his friend’s guiding hand in these events. Over time, larger numbers of unbelievers had begun to populate the tents—Universalists, deists, atheists, even Protestants who believed William Miller, the man who had cracked the code of Christ’s Return, to be himself a devil in disguise. The camp-meetings at times had disintegrated into hot debates and shouting matches as unbelievers in their many shades sparred with the Adventists and rivaled the preachers’ fervor with their own indignant zeal or pure contrariness.

At some camp-meetings liquor stands had begun to appear on the roads leading into the grounds, attracting curious onlookers and fueling the discontent of the local citizenry. On one such stand a sign had appeared:
WHISKEY FOR SALE—DRUNKS
5¢
,
CHRISTIANS FREE
.

Cheap booze inevitably had led to gangs of shellacked rowdies taunting the sinners who had ridden through the gauntlet on their way to the Kingdom of God. At one camp ground, horse-drawn omnibuses mysteriously had appeared and the drunken mob had clambered aboard them to convey their curses into the center of the meeting. But the liquor had done its job, and cursing had been transformed into egg-tossing—an act that Jonathon thought required some forethought—and then vandalism. The laughing tormenters had overturned food tables, torn down the colored folks’ tent, set fire to a stack of hymnals, and provoked retaliation with a discordant version of
Onward Christian Soldiers
before merrily stumbling back onto their omnibuses to escape the wrath of a thousand believers suddenly awakened from their stunned stupor.

How Ollie had been able to orchestrate and finance such shenanigans, if indeed he had, Jonathon could not figure out. At each camp-meeting, they would generally arrive during set-up and Ollie would leave Jonathon to his craft with the simple instruction to document the event in pictures “as you see fit, you’re the artist,” and then would disappear for several days. There had never been a shortage of dramatic images to capture by daguerreotype or drawing—the muscular wrangling of tents, the freshly-scrubbed children in flowered bonnets, the bent-kneed repentants, the countless expressions of grief, panic, devotion, fear, love. How Jonathon had wished he could also capture the sounds that filled the woods around these camp-grounds—the moans and wails, the rapturous songs of praise, a crow’s cackle during silent prayers, the camp bells that announced each activity, the innumerable voices like the sound of many waters.

Though he had counted himself among the unbelievers, Jonathon had found comfort in these camps. He could ignore the hellfire and brimstone just as he could frame a picture to eliminate distracting elements. It almost made him wish he believed in God.

With many camp-meetings behind them, Ollie and Jonathon approach yet another one, but this time Ollie seems quietly nervous. Apprehensive. Unlike most of the others, this meeting has already begun so they will be entering the grounds during a service. Jonathon knows this because the chorus of
Don’t You See My Jesus Coming
serenely wafts through the virgin timber that surrounds the camp.

The two of them ride their horses westward down a narrow road that finally breaks over a small ridge. From here they can look down upon the camp-ground. Drawn about in a circle are the white tents, like patches of snow in a field of greens and yellows. Behind the tents are the provision stalls and cook-shops. Curling smoke rises like incense from many small fires. Tall stands of hemlocks and vines cast their melancholy shadows over the gathered multitude, which must number several thousand. The enormous tabernacle tent sits in the center with its sides drawn up to entice summer breezes to cool perspiring faces and, God willing, to encourage the Holy Spirit to enter and take possession of desperate hearts.

Jonathon notices that there are no liquor stands or gangs of thugs along the road.

They continue to ride, pushed forward by several hundred late-arriving salvation seekers traveling by foot, horseback and wagon. After making arrangements at the stables to care for their horses—50
¢
per day for the pair—Jonathon follows Ollie to the big tent. It is stuffed to overflowing. Ollie pulls Jonathon into the tent and they take two vacant seats on a freshly-sawn plank.

On the platform, a rude pulpit made of rough boards stands in front of a row of wooden chairs in which sit assorted dignitaries, local church leaders, and the traveling evangelists, musicians and singers. One of them is a plain but kind-looking woman several years younger than Ollie. She is looking at him and he instinctively smiles at her.

Suspended behind the pulpit are two immense sheets of canvas, each perhaps ten feet square. On one is painted the figure of a man with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly of brass, legs of iron, and feet of clay; this is the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. The other floating image is a depiction of the wonders of the Apocalyptic vision—the monsters and dragons, the scarlet woman observed by the Seer of Patmos, exotic Orientals, mystic symbols—all translated into bizarre and absurd caricatures but exhibited here like the freaks of a traveling sideshow.

For his rapt audience, the preacher is earnestly dissecting the image of the man with clay feet. Each section of this Frankenstein’s monster represents a kingdom on earth, he says. And then he proceeds to take the body apart, kingdom by kingdom, until nothing is left but the feet of iron and clay, which are doomed, he says—
DOOMED!
—to be broken into pieces on the tenth day of the seventh month of Jubilee
Hallelujah!

Throughout the oration Jonathon tensely awaits some kind of interruption by Ollie, but it never comes. The man sits there quietly, listening, moving only occasionally to wipe his brow with a handkerchief.

At last the preacher begins his altar call, inviting all those repentants in the tent to come forward and be saved while there is still time, and if you are not yet persuaded, please come back this evening to hear one of the most powerful preachers ever to bring the message of the Second Coming of Jesus to the great state of New York, our dear brother
Gordon Cranston
. At seven o’clock this evening, the preacher says.

Ollie suddenly stirs, agitated. As a hundred or more sinners rise from their seats and march toward the pulpit, Ollie also rises. Jonathon winces, expecting some kind of profane outburst. He closes his eyes, leans away, hoping that the distance will disassociate him from Ollie.

But Ollie says nothing. He simply walks out of the tent. He is finally about to complete his mission.