The Killing Room (15 page)

The Preacher stood before the crowd of a hundred, divine and young and handsome in his white linen suit and lemon yellow shirt. He was willow-slender and graceful, and moved minklike around the area at the front of the church, just below the cross. He projected a lightning force, an energy that came across even when he was just standing still. Ruby imagined it was the Holy Ghost that filled him, pure and simple. Behind the Preacher’s head the bright light over the makeshift pulpit created a golden aurora.

Ruby knew all about the Preacher, knew of his hardscrabble past, not that different from her own. She knew these things because the Preacher had written a book about his life –
I Am the Spirit –
and Ruby read it so many times that the words were now starting to fade from the page. She once dropped the book into a rain puddle and ran home, drying it before the fire, ironing each page flat with her aunt Hazel’s dry iron.

In his life, in the days before the light, even the Preacher
knew darkness. A backwoods boy, a son of Appalachia born in Letcher County, Kentucky, he had survived the devil in two fathers, and a mother whose mind was taken by Satan himself.

When the Preacher was still a boy his stepsister Charlotte was murdered. Many believed it was this terrible tragedy that put him on the path to salvation.

The Holy Thunder Caravan traveled all over, passing through northern Kentucky, southern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania. The Preacher also appeared on the radio. When Ruby knew that his program was going to be on she would park herself at the table and listen, letting his beautiful voice fill her with the Spirit.

This night Ruby took a chair at the back of the gathering, and listened to the congregation raise their voice in praise, heard the music soar to the heavens. She did not have the courage to join in, but just being this close to the Preacher filled her with a happiness she had never known.

The next day the caravan moved on. Ruby cried for days. She walked six miles to the small library every Saturday looking for news in out-of-town papers. Once she was rewarded with a notice that the Preacher and his Holy Thunder Caravan would be stopping in nearby Brandonville.

Ruby went to work taking in washing, sweeping out stalls, anything she could to make money. In the end she saved eleven dollars, enough for a round trip on the Greyhound.

This time the Preacher spoke about the evils of the flesh. When he called those who had not been saved by the Word to
come forward, Ruby found herself on her feet, hands raised in testimony.

When the Preacher finally came to her he touched her forehead. The feeling began in her toes, a sensation of warmth and serenity she had never before experienced. The world soon became a bright white light and there was no doubt – no doubt at all – that it was the Spirit rising within her.

The next thing Ruby knew she was lying on a cot behind the tent, a cold cloth on her forehead. The woman sitting next to her was big and jolly. She wore old grease-stained overalls and smelled of hand-rolled cigarettes and orange candy.

‘Am I in heaven?’ Ruby asked.

The woman laughed. ‘No, little darling, you’re still in West Virginia. It’s been called a lot of things, but heaven sure as hell ain’t one of them.’

Ruby knew that evangelists were travelers, just as she knew that there had always been wanderlust in her own shoes.

That night she went home, did her chores. At dawn she took her school dress and her good dress, her few other possessions, and left.

She never went home again.

When Ruby returned to the campgrounds, the tent was dark. She entered, saw a solitary figure standing at the pulpit. It was himself. Ruby would always remember how the Preacher looked – tall and regal and divinely sent – silhouetted against the cream-colored canvas of the tent in the moonlight.

The Preacher saw her and smiled. Ruby felt as if she might faint again, but she put her hand on the edge of a chair, and
after a few moments she felt fine. The Preacher came around, pulled out a chair, and welcomed her.

And thus Mary Elizabeth Longstreet became a member of the Holy Thunder Caravan.

Ruby spent that summer traveling with the caravan, roaming across southern Ohio and northern West Virginia, to towns like Grand Run, Friendly, Sistersville, and Paden City. The Preacher liked to move along the banks of the Ohio River which, in the summer months, made it convenient to baptize folks.

At first there were just seven people in the entourage. You wouldn’t think by just looking at the tent and the hundred or so chairs that there was so much work involved in planning, moving, setting up, taking down, packing.

Ruby was not a big girl, but she was much stronger than she appeared. Many times she matched the two older boys who helped out.

At each stop the Preacher would set them up at a small motel or a campsite, then go into the town to spread the word. When possible he would get himself interviewed on the local radio station. He could always get the Holy Thunder Caravan mentioned on the religious pages of the local newspapers for free, but it wasn’t until he took a small ad in the entertainment section that the bigger crowds began to show up.

Some nights the Preacher would summon Ruby to his room. There he would sit in front of the mirror while Ruby brushed his beautiful golden hair. One of the few things Ruby carried that was of any value was her grandmother’s hairbrush. The brush had a gold-tone stamped metal handle, along with
a base inset bearing a hand-embroidered floral petit point sample. Night after night Ruby would brush the Preacher’s hair – never fewer than one hundred strokes – while he regaled her with stories from the Good Book.

Over the next few months, while she toured with the caravan, Ruby spent much of her time with the twins, Abigail and Peter. The twins, who had been taken in by the Preacher when their parents were killed in an automobile accident near Elkins, were just toddlers at the time, and had been touched by the Lord in a way that made them special.

On many nights, when the tent had been struck and packed away, when the chairs and booths had been loaded into the truck, and the caravan was ready to depart at dawn light, Ruby would read to Abigail and Peter.

Their favorite story was from
1 Samuel
, 17, the story of David and Goliath.

When Ruby was thirteen, her womanhood bursting, everything changed.

One evening, on a hot July night, just outside Moundsville, the Preacher took her hand and said, ‘Come with me, child.’

They went to his RV, a grand place where Ruby had never been. Inside were soft golden sofas, a television, and the ceiling was painted with a bright blue sky.

At the back of the main part of the RV, hanging from a hook, was a pink dress, store-bought and beautiful. The preacher told her it was hers, and that she should put it on.

They had supper, just the two of them, at a fold-down dining table. Ruby was so nervous she had to remind herself to chew her food. She had wine for the first time in her life.

When they were finished, and Ruby had cleared the plates, they sat across from each other on the sofas.

‘You know, the Lord has very big plans for you, Mary Elizabeth.’

‘He does?’

The Preacher waited a few moments, as was his way, then rose. This night he wore black, right down to his tie. He moved like a cat across the small space. He sat on the sofa next to her, took her hand in his. This close, she could see the small flecks of gold in his eyes. She felt light-headed at his nearness.

‘There will come a time – not for many years, God willing – when I will no longer be able to bring the Word to the people,’ he said.

‘Why not?’ Ruby managed. She fidgeted on her cushion, the store-bought dress a little too tight.

The Preacher smiled, and Ruby felt her knees begin to knock. She did her best to stop them.

‘Although I am young now, it will not always be so.’

She knew what he meant, but she could not imagine him any other way than he was at that moment. ‘Let us drink the Lord’s bounty,’ he said, handing her a crystal goblet. He took his own, and they touched the rims together, making a sound not unlike the pealing of a bell on a great, shining chapel on a hill.

She lifted the glass to her lips and drank. At first she found this new wine to be bitter, but the more she had, the less bitter it became.

The Preacher read to her from the Scriptures well into the night, and as he did they continued to drink the bitter wine.

*

In the dream that was not a dream, the Preacher stood at the foot of the bed. He was now dressed in red, and wore a Roman collar.

‘Mary,’ he said softly.

In the dream that was not a dream Ruby was naked. She felt the humid night breeze through the window. She could smell the honeysuckle and summer hyacinth.

In the dream that was not a dream the Preacher entered her. The pain was terrible, and in the dimness of the bedroom she saw his eyes, felt the heat of his breath, and for a moment she looked inside him, and there saw deep and terrible chasms of fire.

Ruby awoke in her own sleeping bag, inside one of the trucks. She sat up, her head hurting and spinning, her body aching, a wicked thirst inside her. She frantically tried to find her new dress.

It was gone.

The next stop was near a small town in southwestern Ohio called Hannibal. They set up the tent in a field overlooking a lake. It was late summer and the mosquitoes were out in full force. The Preacher sent two boys into town to tack up the flyers.

By six o’clock the people began to arrive. It wasn’t a large crowd, but this was only the first night. The Preacher always stayed three days in a new town in order for the word to spread, and it always did.

There were a total of nine people in the caravan in those days.

The Preacher learned that, when they were in small towns, poor towns, by the second night he had gotten what money he could get from the people. It was then that the Preacher instituted his
From Thy Bounty
nights, encouraging the people to bring food as offering, instead of money. He would hold an abbreviated service, and donations of money would of course be accepted, but mostly people would come with home-baked breads, smoked meats, jams and preserves, and homemade pies.

They always ate well after that.

When the caravan reached New Martinsville they were joined by a man named Carson Tatum. Carson was in his mid-fifties, a kindly widower with more money than faith. Carson Tatum had sold his small chain of hardware stores at a tidy profit, it was said, and dedicated his life to the Word as revealed by the Preacher.

The Preacher needed a driver to haul the ever-increasing amount of gear, and a bargain was struck. The gatherings had grown from an average of fifty or so people to well over two hundred, expanding as word of the Preacher’s healing powers spread.

Carson, who had never had children of his own, took immediately to Ruby, and they became fast friends. Many times she would ride in the front seat of his F-150, and he would delight her with stories of his time as a merchant marine, making stops in faraway places like Singapore, Shanghai, and Karachi.

A few months later they stayed at a rundown motel outside Youngstown, Ohio. The entourage had grown to eleven people by then.

Ruby had not been feeling well, and another girl, a year or so younger, had taken over the care of Abigail and Peter.

The new girl was blond and pretty, but withdrawn, and had about her many of the ways Ruby had had when she first joined the caravan. She revered the Preacher, could barely look his way when he spoke to her.

Ruby’s illness began with a sour stomach every morning, which many times led to her vomiting. More than once she could not make it to the Porto Sans that were always set up near the tent for the people who attended the meetings.

In her third month Ruby began to show, and despite her efforts to hide the presence inside her, she knew what was happening. She came to the Preacher’s RV one night to tell him the wondrous news, but she was turned away.

Before she went back to bed she saw the new girl, Bethany, playing with Abigail. They were playing a game of hide and seek among the tangle of rusted Fords and pickups.

Bethany was wearing Ruby’s pink dress.

On the way back to the tent, tears streaming down her face, Ruby thought she heard a growling sound nearby, a low keening coming from just beyond the edge of the forest. As she approached the wood, she saw two black dogs, big males by the cast of their shadows.

As she stepped into the tent Ruby saw the dogs lope forward, heads lowered, then lay down on either side, their heedful black eyes like shiny marbles in the growing dusk.

Two weeks later, outside Coshocton, Ruby helped set up chairs. When she was finished, she stepped outside the tent for
a cup of water, and caught sight of something moving at the edge of the field. When she stopped and looked closely, the sight made her heart jump. It was the two black dogs she had seen in Youngstown, nearly seventy miles away. They had followed the caravan.

When the dogs approached, tails between their legs, Ruby felt something stir inside her.

Five months later, in early spring, on the evening of Holy Saturday, the Preacher put them all up at a motel in Morristown, Pennsylvania. Ruby had her own room.

In the middle of that restless, sleepless night, the baby said it was time to be born. Ruby barely made it to the door of her room before her water broke. She opened the door, hoping she could make it to the next room where Carson Tatum was sleeping.

What she saw in the parking lot stole her breath.

The caravan, and everyone in it, was gone.

Ruby awakened in a clean room. She would soon learn it was a family clinic in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. When the doctor came to speak to her, she found she had no voice. They brought the baby boy to her. He was beautiful.

After a week, she bundled the boy, took his medicines, and lit out. The first three nights they slept on the side of the road.

The dogs were never far away. Sometimes they would bring food to them, food they had found in the Dumpsters and back lots of diners.