Free The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish by Allan Stratton Page B

jackrabbits whose characters would make a black mark on a piece of tar paper! Well, you’re off to judgment, my friends. You, too, Granny, your white hairs won’t save you from a swim in the Devil’s chamber pot! You’re off to a judgment fierce as that of those damnable rum-soaked Bennetts, suffocating in the rank, fetid sweat of their fornication, drowning in the juices of their abomination! A judgment fierce as Sodom and Gomorrah, when the Lord God made Mount Vesuvius puke a hemorrhage of lava!”
    Congregations were disconcerted. In theory, they accepted that they were all sinners, but in practice it was generally understood that the preacher’s wrath was to be directed at sinners outside the tent. By the end, only Pentecostals had the stomach to attend. They could count on the Holy Spirit descending, transporting them with the gift of tongues, God’s proof-positive that they’d been saved by the blood of the Lamb and were bound for glory with Percy and the angels.
    Floyd had known that life in the Lord’s vineyard was not for the upwardly mobile, but after expenses he barely had the scratch to pay for his French ticklers. He decided to pull the plug. He waited till they hit London, Ontario. Here Percy would be as happy as he’d be liable to get, haranguing one of the last crowds to consider him a somebody.
    A nd so, the afternoon of that fateful revival, Brother Floyd moseyed his partner into the van of the trailer truck. “I’ve been doing some thinking.”
    “Praise the Lord. The first step to repentance.”
    Floyd bit his tongue. “The ministry’s had it,” he continued. “It’s time to call it quits.”
    Percy staggered backwards. “ Quits ? Where would the world be today if Jesus had called it quits?”
    “Our receipts don’t amount to a pinch of heifer dust,” Floyd persevered. “We’re a corpse begging to be buried.”
    “And what if we are? Lazarus came back.”
    “For heaven’s sake, Perce, you’re misery on a stick, you scare the kids.”
    “God didn’t put us on this earth to be happy. We were put here to serve.”
    “There’s other ways to serve.”
    “Not for me! This ministry’s my calling. It’s where I belong. It’s my home.”
    “It’s not your home, it’s a tent. Repeat after me: ‘This is a tent. A tent of horrors kept fresh with slaughterhouse guts and a paintbrush.’”
    “Nooo!”
    Floyd wasn’t good with tears, but he wasn’t about to let a wave of compassion sink his resolve. “Perce,” he stared in embarrassment over the poor man’s left shoulder, “I’ve been doing some calculations. There’s a way we can close up shop and go our separate ways with a little something to tide us over.”
    Percy sniffled. The absence of other vocalizing encouraged Floyd to believe that reason had a prayer.
    “We got ourselves seven thousand square feet of tent near as I can reckon. At four six-inch squares per square foot, that’s twenty-eight thousand squares. I propose we do one final farewell tour. Each night we’ll sell Redemption squares, to be cut from the tent and delivered at tour’s end: two bits a piece, or a buck for one with blood on it.”
    Percy gaped like a gopher on a spit. “YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A GODDAMN STOOL UP THE DEVIL’S ANUS!” He hurled a folding chair at his partner and flew from the fairgrounds, tears of rage, horror, and helplessness flooding down his cheeks. “Dear God,” he beseeched, falling at the foot of a mighty oak, “steep me in Your wrath! Do such a Work through me tonight that it will tear the firmament!”
    The next thing Percy knew, he was on stage screaming at Timmy Beeford, lightning shearing the main pole, ripping the wires, popping the light bulbs, exploding the generator — and his mother’s childhood caution ringing in his ears: “Percy, my pumpkin, be careful what you pray for. God may be listening.”

K.O. Doyle and Co.
    B right and early the following morning, Brother Floyd had surveyed the damage to