The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (20 page)

Hicks stood at my shoulder.

The boy flipped through the Bible like
he was looking for a particular passage. People in the congregation murmured.
Somebody in the back shouted a loud, clear, “Hallelujah.”

The kid wiped his face again—a child
actor, not a preacher—and I looked at Hicks. He stood there, arms folded,
smiling and nodding his head.

The kid said, “I’m going to preach
about…” He sighed and paused dramatically. The noise from the congregation
grew.

“Tonight, I’m preaching about…” His
young voice couldn’t articulate each consonant. It sounded like baby talk.

“Praise Jesus!” A woman shouted from
the back. Hicks clapped his hands, a gesture that inspired more of the same
from the group. The kid smiled, letting the roar build, which had the effect of
generating more anticipation. More buzz. The kid said, “Tonight I’m preaching
about the one true God!”

Screams of praise erupted from the
tent. If it’d been any louder, we all would’ve spilled into the grass like
feathers from a burst pillow.

“The red hot revival!” He shouted and
jumped a little. He landed with his fist on the Bible and said, “Made whole by
the power of God.”

And the crowd bought it. Grown men and
women with their hands in the air and eyes closed.

“Be made whole by the Holy Spirit!” He
jumped in the air two, three, four times. “The Holy Spirit is coming down into
this church tonight to make us whole.”

Gibberish. Catchphrases. Not a single
word of substance. I could only shake my head.

Hicks got real close to me. Close
enough to smell the fake apple in his cologne. “You going to be saved tonight,
girl,” he said, letting his finger slide down my breastbone. “Or you’re going
to wish you were. You only get one shot to deny Christ. The second time, we’re
going to try you as a witch.”

He drifted over to the child preacher,
clapping and pumping his fist. He grabbed the guitar player’s mic out of its
stand and said, “Thank you, Grayden! And praise Jesus.”

Truly took Hicks’s place as my
personal attendant. She watched him stoically drop to his knees and hug the
kid. I couldn’t tell if she looked more angry or hurt. At this point, I didn’t
know if I could tell the difference. Somebody in the crowd spoke in tongues.

Grayden’s mom waited at the far side
of the tent. She stood next to a tall man with dark eyes and hair. The man may
have been Grayden’s daddy, but he sure as hell wasn’t his father. Only one man
in the room had hair blond enough and eyes blue enough. And he was about to
speak.

The drone of electric guitars hammered
out dissonant chords over the drummer’s straight 4/4 time, drowning out
chattering voices. Hicks closed his eyes to the beat. He waved a hand, and the
playing got a lot quieter. Just a whispered taptap of the drum and palm-muted
chords. Hicks held the mic to his lips. “How ’bout a little intercession?”

The crowd noise grew. Somebody right
near me in the front row spoke in tongues. “Eehee keykee mongobah chur chongo
un too peek tickakaan…”

“They say I’ve got God, Jesus and the
Holy Spirit itself in my bones from the time I was born,” Hicks whispered into
the mic. “I ain’t educated, but I’m a smart man and I got the degree that keeps
the light on for these people. They come to me with questions science and
government can’t answer, and the response flows through me, like a river.
You’ll see tonight. Because you are but a dark stain on the face of this earth.
But by the time you’re done here, by God, you’ll either be saved or dead.”

He was talking to me.

“My spirit talks to their spirits, and
together we have a conversation with God through the Holy Spirit. He tells me it’s
coming, and that I need to get the people ready.” The sizzle of the ride cymbal
went into my ears like a Holstein to clover. My head pounded, but all I could
do was angle it away from the drum kit. It gave me a little relief, but I still
felt a migraine coming on.

At once the drums stopped. A wave of
hushes flew through the congregation. Women stood on tiptoes, fanning
themselves with paper fans as they strained to find Hicks’s baby blue eyes. I
felt hot breath on my neck and tried to jerk forward. The drummer put his hand
on my shoulder and said, “You need to get your eyes on Jesus. Everything Elijah
says is scriptural. It’s God’s word—not the words of them unholy spirits
filling your head. Search your heart and make sure you got your house in order,
because He’s coming soon and you best prepare yourself for the day of his
glorious return.”

He placed his hand on my head. I could
smell Skoal on his fingertips. “I’ll pray for you.”

Truly watched.

Hicks paused with the mic at his lips
and toweled himself off. Just like Grayden did. He smiled, a blond Elvis,
shaking souls instead of hips. He quietly spoke into the mic, “How y’all
doing?”

A chorus of responses, and an early
“Amen” here and there came back from the congregation. New rounds of voices
exploded in tongues. “…deev ell a potom cert ho vzal prayeehan.”

“Little hot out here tonight. Sorry
about that.” Hicks walked to the far end of the tent, spun on his heels and
returned to the center. He clasped the mic between his fingers and dropped his
head like he was in deep thought. After a moment, he put the mic back to his
mouth, and said, “Bet you it’s a little hotter in hell right now.”

A roar built in the crowd as people
jumped to their feet. Behind me, the drummer counted off a real quick four
count and banged out that same elementary beat he’d been pounding out since
we’d arrived. The guitarist and bass player riffed on a simple I-IV-V chord
pattern as the people of the congregation hooted and kicked. Folding chairs
were passed to the edge of the tent, handed from person to person, letting more
of those on the outside squeeze themselves in. The steady clang of tambourines
came from all around me.

Hicks shouted into the mic, “The
congregation of God is a living breathing temple and each person in that temple
is a stone! This is a spiritual temple where the people worship God in spirit
and in truth. It is not a church building—a dead church where sinners follow
pedophile priests. In this church… In this spiritual temple, every believer is
a priest. God now dwells in and among his people.” He toweled himself again and
turned his back to the congregation.

Men and women lifted their palms to
the sky, eyes closed, murmuring prayers. Together they sounded like summer
cicadas. Hicks watched, smiling. When he saw me looking he rushed over to me.
He grabbed my jaw and turned me to face a girl in the front row. He shouted
into my ear, “This young lady is getting the Holy Ghost!”

To make sure the show never stopped he
held the mic up to his mouth so the congregation could hear. “She is baptized
in Jesus’s name for the remission of her sins! Now she has a new life in Jesus
Christ!”

He left me to return to his flock. A
thousand hands in the air. Men and women on their knees. A group of people way
off to my right pushed toward an old lady wearing a knit cap and speaking in
tongues. Their hands waved, fingers in the air, eyes closed. Their eyes were
always closed. The music built in pulsating waves. I turned and saw a pair of
banjo pickers and another guitarist surrounding the mic stands. They’d
abandoned the I-IV-V and hammered away at the same chord over and over again. A
pulsing, droning tune that created empty space above the congregation for the
prayers of the church. The drone put them into the trance that let Hicks have his
way with them.

“Sert nikdy nespi hakkaleena sert
veede viljdi k sertupray…”

My mind tricked me into believing the
syllables radiating from the congregation made sense. I knew all about
matrixing, and finding order in chaos. But I heard the same things over and
over, like standing on the beach and seeing only the tops of waves until just
before they broke. I tried to keep the syllables straight in my head, and they
spoke to me through the noise. My heart raced. For a fragment of a second, I
wanted to believe. I wanted to be back at Mass with my grandma on Sunday
morning.

“But y’all are not here only to
listen. No, sir, y’all ain’t. You came to test your faith. You came to show God
that his laws supersede local laws. State laws. Federal laws. Man’s laws are
fine… For some folks. The state don’t want us out here, meeting like this.” He
waved his hands to get the attention of somebody at the back of the tent.

“The state has its laws, and we have
ours. Y’all know which I’m talking about, right?”

Men approached the pulpit from all
sides of the tent. Three from the back. Two from behind me. Some from behind
Hicks. Emerging from the cold humidity itself.

“We got the Commandments, handed down
to Moses from God himself.”

The men carried wooden boxes of
various shapes and sizes. Some had a series of holes drilled into the top and
sides. Some had wire mesh tacked to the wood. Like little cages. I tried to see
inside, but could only see burlap. Didn’t matter. I knew.

At that moment I wanted to feel the
communion wafer on my tongue, and to believe it had become the body of Christ.
For a moment, I wanted to belong. I wanted the warmth of my grandma’s church.

“The Lord works with mystery, and
challenges us to seek out guidance. His Word extends beyond the Commandments,
and He challenges us to find answers elsewhere in His Book if we are to test
our faith. I’m talking about Mark, chapter sixteen, verse eighteen. Y’all know
that one?”

The crowd pushed toward the altar.
Hicks held them back with a wave of his hand.

The sound of tongues grew. “Okalla
sert nikdy prayay nespi…”

I knew what was coming, because I’d
cracked the code. Only thing left to do was verify it.

“Mishkash dapel nespi moor!”

The drummer tripped over the beat and
fumbled the turn around. So with all the grace of a stop sign, he hiccupped
toward a faster tempo.

“Unkuprayay sertu kalalagod…”

Tongues streamed forth from every
corner of the tent now. Dissonant voices spitting out syllables—to break the
code I had to listen real close. Women ululated to the stream-of-consciousness
voices in their heads. Some bounced like punks. Men kicked their legs up. Some
fell to the ground, spasms popping in time with the beat. I fought to keep
track of the syllables.

“Holy Spirit, be with us tonight!”

“An dev eel kee sonnitprayayay where
kanlal…”

The wooden boxes were laid at Hicks’s
feet. He kicked the lid back with his toe. When Hicks rolled up his sleeve, I
saw the markings that we’d mistaken for needle tracks back in Louisville
outside the club. The black and blue bruises that dotted his atrophied and
misshapen forearm looked like bad tattoos. But I knew exactly what they were.

“Tumal godkan malee tola billbilled…”

It all made sense at that moment. The
syllables.

The devil prays wherever God
builds a church.

I rocked the chair as hard as I could.
Truly and a man from the congregation held me steady. I screamed, but the noise
got lost in the crowd.
The devil prays wherever God builds a
church.
That
was what they were saying.

Hicks spoke over them. “These
‘seminary preachers’ don’t know a lick about what happens in the world of men
and women with bills to pay and babies to feed. One Lord! One house!”

A chorus of tambourines ran wild
through the uneven tempo. Children ran through the crowd, screaming, swinging
their arms. Old men openly wept. Young men jumped as high as they could, their
heads appeared at unbalanced intervals above the crowd. The screams and
expression I saw were sexual—orgasmic. Women balled their fists and pulled
their hair. They screamed in ecstasy, longing for a touch they’d never feel.

Hicks reached into the wooden crate
and wrapped his hand around a magnificent viper. A lazy rattler as thick as his
forearm. He held it over his head and danced wild circles like an Indian brave
from an old cowboy movie. He kicked his legs out in front of him and spun with
his arms out to his side, the mic in his right hand countering the snake in his
left. He shouted, “They shall pick up serpents with their bare hands!” And his
voice boomed through the PA system.

He shook the snake, agitating it but
not hurting it. The lazy rattles shivered, hissing like steam from a pot on a
gas stove. He waved it over the people in the audience, shaking it. One of his
girls took the mic from him, looking more like a magician’s assistant than a
parishioner. She held it up to his mouth long enough for him to shout, “And it
shall not hurt him!” Feedback screamed out of the cheap PA.

Hicks held his forearm up to the
snake’s flicking tongue. The snake pulled away, but Hicks persisted, taunting the
snake with the warmth of his shriveled arm.

When the snake struck I didn’t see it.
That was how fast it hit. Only Hicks’s reaction, a moment of panic, like he
couldn’t be entirely sure that this one wouldn’t be different, gave way to the
smug satisfaction that his God had saved him yet again. The snake clung to his
arm, pumping its jaw, working venom into his blood. But Hicks smiled and held
the serpent high above his head. Whipping the congregation into ecstasy.