The Tent (4 page)

"I'll see what I can do."

"Also you might want to buy some cheap shoes at a pawn shop and sand a hole in the bottom so they look worn. Then you want to sit down now and then and make sure they see the bottom of your shoes, so's they'll think you ain't doing all that well."

"Really? Do people really do that?"

Jamey nodded. "You've got to think to stay ahead, you've got to think all the time."

Jamey turned the doorknob, Davis went out in front of him, and they were gone. Steven watched them go and thought,
Now we've got a gimp and a lunger?

Corey looked at the wall mirror over the small writing table next to the television. "You know, I think he's right. My hair
is
too flat. I believe I should have it done."

COREY WAS A natural at "healing," or as Jamey put it, "You can sure lay down them miracles."

That night there were thirty-four people—the best crowd they'd ever had—and none of them knew yet about the laying on of hands.

Jamey and Davis arrived slightly early, already "in character," as Jamey put it. Davis was coughing softly into a handkerchief with red spots on it.

"It's ketchup," Jamey said. "Holds the color better and lasts for hours." He was limping well, now and then dragging his right leg, and as a final touch had brought a pair of cheap wooden crutches. He spoke quietly for a few moments with Corey, who
nodded, and then Jamey came to Steven, who was standing by the tent opening where the tape player was to play the opening hymn.

"Mind when I throw the crutches down," Jamey told Steven. "I'll throw them away from the congregation, but sometimes they'll get to being light-fingered, those who come to see the miracles. I've had crutches and even neck braces stole from me. So as soon as I flop them down you come on, you know, like an attendant and take them away."

"Like an attendant?"

"Exactly. We can't go to buying a new pair of crutches every night can we? It would eat the profits up."

"Profits..."

Jamey nodded, then smiled. "Ever wonder why
profits
and
prophets
sound so much alike? Kind of like a message, ain't it? Like we're supposed to be making money."

Steven moved back out the opening and out of sight, still smiling and half thinking it was all a joke.
But then people started to arrive and they all looked clean and hopeful, some of them kids, scrubbed and fresh and ready to hear about God, and a tinge of something, not a pain but coming toward it, a small shot of something cold and not very pretty came to him: they were doing this all to people who seemed to really believe.

But then it was time for the hymn to start and he became busy, and when the moment came for the laying on of hands and healing, everything was new and exciting and he forgot the feeling.

His father did the sermon and then they sang another hymn—Steven was getting good at keying in the music—but then, after the hymn, instead of passing the basket his father waved him away and stood at the pulpit again.

"I have heard there are those who need the healing grace of God," he said.

"Amen," several in the congregation murmured. Steven was certain Davis and Jamey were first.

"Whoever you are, please come forward."

There was a moment's silence, almost an awkwardness that seemed to come into the tent and then a rustling as first Jamey, struggling on his crutches, and then Davis, the handkerchief to his mouth, came forward. They had been sitting at the end of the bench in the clear, but it was still difficult for Jamey to work the crutches around people's legs as he came forward, and he played it to the hilt, apologizing to them, stumbling, once falling nearly into somebody's lap.

Finally he stood before Corey, looking up at him, his eyes hopeful, and Steven could swear there was a tear coming down from each. "I want the power of God in me—I want Him to heal me."

"Do you believe?"

"I believe."

Corey stepped forward and put his hand on Jamey's forehead. "Do you
believe?
"

And he suddenly snapped Jamey's head back,
jerked it forward again, and Jamey stood silent for a moment, his eyes closed and then, almost in a whisper: "I feel it."

"Hallelujah," Corey said, also in a whisper.

Jamey half turned and said louder, "I feel it!"

"Hallelujah!" Corey made it louder, turned to the congregation, and raised his hands. "Hallelujah!"

"I feel the power of the Lord in me," Jamey said, louder still. "I feel it in my bones, in my old bones. I
feel
it."

"Amen," Corey said. Then, louder again, "
Amen!
"

And any hesitation in the people of the congregation, who had been almost silent, was gone when Jamey threw aside the crutches—being careful, as he'd said, to aim them away from the people where Steven could get them—and stood straight. "I'm healed! I'm
healed!
"

He turned and walked across the space in front of the pulpit without limping, and at the same time Davis started up with the most horrible hacking
Steven had ever heard, worse even than his demonstration in the motel room. He stumbled forward while he was coughing, the reddened handkerchief showing, and Corey repeated the gestures, shaking Davis's head and yelling, "
Heal!
"

Except by this time he had the crowd and they shouted, "Hallelujah!" and "Amen!" so loud Steven could almost see the canvas flapping, and when Davis stood and breathed deeply without coughing there was a continuous chorus of amens that fed on itself and grew until the tent was filled with sound.

Steven couldn't believe it. It was all so phony since he knew what was going on, but they wanted to believe in it so much, so very much, that they took it all at face value.

We are stealing from them,
he thought. It struck him so hard that he actually took a step forward, was going to tell his father about the thought, but then something strange happened.

A woman stood up suddenly. She was tall and thin and seemed gaunt but not old. She was in the
middle of the second row of benches, and she stumbled over people as she came out.

"I have a problem," she said, moving toward the pulpit. "I have no strength. I become weak in the afternoons. Please help me. Bring God to me to help me."

For a second Corey was taken aback, but only a second. He put his hand on the woman's head.

"God," he said. "Give her strength, give her strength all the time, give her
your
strength." He shook her head on the word
your
and seemed to push so hard the woman nearly fell over, would have fallen, except that Jamey had remained nearby and caught her and held her up.

"I can feel it," she said. "I
cam feel
it! God is in me." Her back grew straighter and to Steven's complete amazement she seemed to fill in some way, almost to grow and become a healthy looking young woman.

God,
he thought,
my God.
And it wasn't swearing; it was a kind of prayer.
I have seen it work,
he thought.
I have seen the miracle work.

At that moment somebody at the side found and passed the collection basket and Steven remembered suddenly to start the final hymn. He moved to the tape player slowly, still in awe, and he saw that even his father looked stunned, kept looking at the woman as she went back to the pew, staring after her.

I saw it too,
Steven thought.
She changed completely.

Steven took the basket and Corey did the blessing and then waited for everybody to file out. Nobody moved until, finally, Jamey stood and went to the door of the tent and waved at them and walked ahead of them out into the parking area.

At that they moved out and got in their cars—all in silence, even the children—and drove away. Jamey stayed outside for a moment and spoke to the woman who had come up from the congregation and shook her hand and closed her car door for her
and watched her drive away. Then he came back into the tent, where Davis—as soon as the last car was gone—started counting the collection.

"Right at three hundred dollars," he said, smiling at Jamey, who came to help count. "And some change."

Corey was drenched in perspiration, his back and sides wet. "Did you see her?" he asked of no one in particular. "Did you
see
her?"

"I did," Steven said. "It was incredible. She looked so sick and you touched her, and she just seemed to swell up with life."

Jamey looked up from helping Davis with the collection. "The woman? That was Helen."

"You know her?"

"Of course. I asked her to come. She's a filler—one of the best there is. Puffs up like a balloon, don't she? She happened to be in the area and I gave her a call. Don't you worry none—I'll pay her out of my percentage. She won't cost you a dime."

Corey held up his hand. "You mean she isn't real?"

"Well, of
course
she's real. You just saw her, didn't you? She's one of the reasons your collection did so good. I called her last night—wait a minute. You thought you'd cured one, didn't you?"

Corey didn't say anything, looking sheepish.

Jamey laughed and slapped his leg. "Oh, that's rich. Davis, listen up—he thought he'd cured one. Come in here on his first run and healed one, that's what he thought. Oh, man, that's good."

And for a second, a short second that Steven would remember later, remember a hundred times later, for three-quarters of a second he felt horrified, felt again like they had stolen something from the people in the congregation, stolen something precious, and from the look on his father's face Corey felt the same. His features fought with it; some last shred of ethics—of good—battled with all the other bad.

But only a moment. Only for the time of a dying thought did it hold. Then Corey smiled; the smile widened and turned into a laugh, and Steven smiled and started laughing a laugh he did not feel at first but again, only for a second, then louder and happier until he was doubled over with it.

"Praise God," Corey said, reaching into the collection basket and holding up a handful of money. "We are going to be
rich!
"

"Praise Almighty God," Jamey said, nodding and laughing, "from whom all blessings flow."

And Steven nodded and laughed and laughed until he could not remember the faces of the people who had sat looking up in such awe, wanting to believe, wanting to know God—laughed it all away.

THEY EVOLVED
a system, a set of plans to follow based on Jamey's experience.

The success of the first "healing night of financial miracles," as Corey came to call it, made them revamp their procedure. They had been planning on staying for a few days or even a week in each town, but Jamey shook his head.

"They come back and see me and Davis or Helen and it's over. You can't use the same crips and lungers over and over, and frankly there aren't that many good ones around. You think me and Davis grow on trees? I learned how to twist that leg back when I was working car accidents, and I took a power of bumps and bruises before it started to
work right. And Davis was years and a lot of whiskey and cigarettes getting that cough right. There's many of 'em don't want to make the commitment for excellence that we do."

"I see." Corey nodded. "So we move around?"

Jamey squatted down in the dirt by the tent and nodded. "Yes, but not in a line. It has to be a star pattern, go up like this a hundred or more miles, then back down like this, then over this way."

He drew a star in the dirt with his finger. "Each point at least a hundred fifty miles from the last point so that there's no pattern. You don't want them to start following you around. That just flat ruins your chances of getting new converts to heal."

"New converts?" Steven had been standing off to the side and he moved a step closer. "You mean people to
really
heal?"

Jamey nodded. "They'll come. As the word spreads that your father has the touch, they'll come. You'll be up to your knickers in crutches and neck braces and slings."

"But Dad doesn't really heal people. It's all a sham."

Jamey looked at Corey and Davis, then back to Steven. "It's all in the head, ain't it? If they
think
they're being healed, then they're being healed, right?"

"Well..."

Corey cut in. "It's all psychological, Steven. I've read about it. It works."

"Just so, just so." Jamey nodded. "And once the word is out you'll see—they'll come from far and wide to get your daddy's touch. You'll have to have a truck to haul the offerings."

And he was right.

By the fourth night after the first healing sermon, Steven was so perpetually tired and confused he wasn't sure where they were or where they were going next. They traveled like a circus. As soon as the sermon was over and the collection counted, they packed the tent into the truck and started driving to the next town. When the tent was set up—
and they could do it in thirty minutes before long—Jamey and Davis and Steven went around town with the handbills, and Corey prepared for the night's work by pressing his suit in the back of the tent with an iron and small board they'd bought at a discount store.

It all seemed a whirl to Steven. The faces came, more and more each time as the word spread, all looking up, all wanting to believe, all clean and many old, most old, and after the fourth or sixth or tenth night they didn't look different any longer. It was the same set of faces, the same set of souls that seemed to follow them from town to town, and at first it bothered Steven, watching Jamey and Davis and now and then Helen fake being healed, but then the money was there.

Three hundred a night was the least. They went to four, five, six, and seven hundred. Then over a thousand a night. Two, three hundred people jammed in the tent on more benches, standing at
the sides, begging to see, to hear, and many to be healed, and each of them brought money. More and more money.