Let the Fire Fall

Chapter Four

OBIE looked over the coliseum carefully. “Up there.” He pointed as he spoke, and Billy nodded and made a note on the pad he held.

“Twenty?”

“Yeah, that’s enough from up there. And a dozen or so from the other-side, half way up. Separated from each other.” Obie turned, studying the mammoth hall with narrowed eyes. “You got two hundred lined up? For sure?”

“Sure, Obie, Ten bucks a head.”

“Okay. About thirty scattered among the others in the first five rows directly in front of me. They’re the first to move, right? And don’t let them clump this time, Billy. Separate them.”

“Right.”

They finished spotting the converts throughout the audience, then retired to Obie’s dressing room. It was an hour before show time. They both thought of it as show time. Dee Dee was already dressed in flowing white robes that contrasted nicely with her long dark hair, waiting, for them in the room.

“Merton called,” she said viciously. “You lousy liar. You told me you were dropping it.” Merton was the private detective Obie had hired.

“Shut up, Dee Dee. Where’s the return number?”

“He said he’ll call back. For God’s sake, what’re you going to do With the kid if you do get him? A kid, for crissake!” Obie slapped her, not too hard, not hard enough to leave a mark that wouldn’t fade away by show time, but enough to shut her up. Dee Dee reached for the bottle, and Billy moved it out of reach.

“Later, kid,” he said. He turned to Obie with a worried pucker. Billy was fatter than he had been even last year. Each year he picked up three, four, or five pounds, and he couldn’t lose them again. He perspired all the time, and he panted. “Obie, don’t do anything rash about the child. Remember our talk about him. Remember what I told you. You can get by with a lot, but not with an illegitimate child. They wouldn’t forgive you that. You want to lose it all?”

Obie swung around and smiled at Billy, his evangelical smile that held the power, and Billy swallowed hard. Obie said softly, “I want my kid, Billy. I’ll make them take it. He’s a genius, Billy. I got a feeling about him. Like that feeling I got five years ago; that feeling that put this whole show on the road. We play it my way, Billy. Every time. Don’t you forget that.”

Billy nodded. Obie’s smile deepened. “Brother,” he said softly, exultantly, “the Lord gave me a child; I confessed that I had sinned, that I had fornicated, but little did I know that out of my sin a child was born, and now revealed to me. The Lord said to me, ‘Obie, retrieve your child from the hands of the nonbelievers and bring him unto the Lord, thy God. I will teach him many things, and through this child will the world be saved from damnation.’”

Billy stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so, Obie. It won’t wash that easily. Not this time.”

Obie laughed. “Then another way. We’ll get a marriage license and make it all legal as hell. Let me tell you something, Billyboy. I seen the kid teaching his mutt some tricks. He sat on the ground with that mutt standing in front of him, and he talked to that goddamn dog like he was a kid, like he could understand every word. And the dog turned around and went and got a stick and brought it back with him. The kid never moved, but the dog knew what he wanted. He sent him off again, and the mutt brought him a ball. Then he laid down and rolled over a couple of times, and the kid rassled with him and that was that.” Obie stopped and half turned from Billy then and said, “Something else, Billyboy. The kid looked up at where I was standing and watching him, and I felt it coming out of him. The power. The way he looked at me, like he knew who I was, and what I was after, and if I washed my feet that morning. I never felt anything like it before, never. Soon’s I get him on that stage and have him look over them people, they’ll believe anything I tell them about him. Watch and see.”

There was a light tap on the door; it opened slightly and Everett Slocum’s face was there. “Ah, Brother Cox, any last instructions? The choir is gathering and waiting for you, Sister Diane.” Dee Dee left without glancing again at Obie or Billy. Everett Slocum didn’t enter the room; he never did unless he was directed to do so. His face was reverential as he continued to watch Obie for instructions.

Obie waved him away. “Just get the ministers down front like always. And invite them for coffee after the sermon. They won’t come, but invite them.”

Everett bobbed his head and withdrew murmuring prayers for the visiting ministers. They would be given Grace eventually, he knew. They would see the light, hear the word being spoken by Brother Cox, and they would be granted the rebirth of soul that would allow them to understand. They came to scorn now, but one day, one day…

“Beat it,” Obie said to Billy after Everett was gone.

“Place your stooges, and then get back here and be here when Merton calls. I want the address where that chick is hanging out, and I want it soon. Real soon.”

The choir, one hundred voices strong, opened the show, followed by a solo in which Dee Dee’s lip sync was perfectly in time with the recording; another group hymn with the congregation joining’ in the choruses; then a throbbing hum from the choir accompanied Obie’s entrance, and there was a sudden dousing of all lights except the one spot that made IDs hair look almost like a halo, and made his beard gleam brilliantly.

Obie had a full house that night. His message was “Fear the Stranger, Prepare for Armageddon.”

Obie prayed first, and as he spoke his prepared words, he began to feel the emotions of his audience. Wonder, awe, but most of all fear. These people had been living in the shadow of the ship for five years, and they were afraid of it and the strangers it had brought. They didn’t like the antlike scurrying of the foreigners in their outlandish clothes; they didn’t like having the UNEF swarming about. Obie felt strength gathering in him and his voice rose and commanded their attention, focused all their thoughts on him and his words, and it was as if the random thoughts had been channeled through a funnel, to concentrate on Obie and within him. He spoke of fear in his prayer, and there was an answer of fear from the audience. He came back to it again, then again, and each time it was amplified. By the time the prayer was over, Obie was ready to launch into his sermon; the audience was ready to receive the sermon.

“In my Father’s house there are many mansions,” Obie said with great force, “and it is time now to bring together the mansions under one roof and join together those who fear God and know His way and prepare to meet the strangers who will return. The Lord said to me, ‘They will return!’ and I say to you, we must prepare now. We must make ready our house here on Earth. We must overcome the atheists and the agnostics and the faint-hearted who would deliver us and our children to the strangers. We must purify our own house before the stranger returns. We must deliver the Star Child from the hands of the godless and show him the way to the Lord, and only then will we be ready to meet the strangers when they return.”

There was more of it, two hours more of it, but the gist without the histrionics, and the verbosities, and the playing on fear, striking points and counterpoints over and over, was simply that: the stranger would return; the Star Child must be wrenched from the hands of the godless and taught the true word; the Lord, a vengeful, wrathful, terrifyingly just Lord was judging man now and would continue to judge him through the coming years. The gentle ones, the meek, the cheek-turners had had their day, and had failed this God of vengeance. There had been a fair lasting trial two thousand years, and now the day of judgment, long promised and postponed, was indeed at hand, and the judging was even then taking place. And the dichotomy was the simplest one to be dreamed of by man; those who believed in the Lord and followed. His word, opposed to those who did not believe who were doomed to be smitten. There was still time, but not for the timid, not for the fearful, not for the compromisers.

Then came the prophecies. Obie predicted floods and anguish on a scale never seen before since the days of The Flood. He predicted riots on the East Coast of the United States. He predicted a major airplane crash within the next two weeks in which over two hundred lives would be lost, and he added that he would pray for the Lord’s intervention on behalf of the people involved here.

He demanded that the non-believers examine their hearts and their consciences and accept God’s word as revealed by His spokesman. He demanded, exhorted, pleaded, wept with them to accept and be saved. And many did. Not counting the original two hundred converts, there were three hundred forty-two who came forward and received Obie’s and God’s blessing. And very soon afterward it was all over.

That was Saturday. On Sunday Winifred was planning to visit the ship once more. It was still an impenetrable mystery to all who worked on it. She had been there half a dozen times already, each time with no purpose in mind, hoping to find something that would give her an insight into the Star Child.

Sunday was bright and clear and cool, with heat expected later in the day. Winifred, in a sleeveless cotton dress that cost over one hundred dollars, straw hat and sandals, prepared to leave for her visit to the ship. Blake stared at her with a thoughtful expression and said, “I’ve been there. To look at the ship. The Christmas we came to this house.”

“But you were only eighteen months old,” Winifred said. “You still remember?”

He nodded. And looking at him Winifred believed him. “Well, if you think Obie will draw a crowd again this morning, I’d better be on my way,” she said to Matt. “Hard to think of him as a drawing card, isn’t it?”

Matt shrugged. “I’ll take you over and drop you. You’ll have to get a cab back, or have one of the official cars bring you.”

Matt talked about the reason for the heavy traffic as he drove, stopping and starting in a line that was blocks long. The traffic was worse as they approached the bridge. “This is the semi-official Memorial Day service this morning,” Matt said. “It doesn’t matter when the thirtieth falls, they have this service on the first Sunday in June. All over this part of the country today is Decoratin’ Day. The women decorate the graves, and there’s a service in the open. They all bring lunches: hams, salads, beef roasts, pies. It’s quite a spread, enough food to last the day. Old Mr. MacLeish will drone on and on for a couple of hours, and the kids will whisper and giggle and try to sneak punch-fruit punch, a specialty of Dom Winters, full of floating oranges and cherries, and really good. Then they will have the procession to the graves, just to the right of the tables incidentally. Most of the women make the flowers, or buy them from Mollie Doan or Sarah Tatum; they take a year to make the things, plastic, organdy, bits of feathers, quite pretty too, and durable. Another prayer over the graves, and the women cry a bit and the men shuffle their feet, then dinner. And afterward gossip. And the kids take to the bushes.”

Winifred looked at him sharply and he grinned. “No one knows it, of course. All very unofficial and unacknowledged. but there it is. All the rites of spring.”

They were silent then, crossing the Ohio River on the new bridge that soared gracefully, ten lanes wide, over the river. Matt turned from the highway on the other side. “I’ll drive past the old church, not out of the way, just by back roads instead of this.”

The congregation was gathered already; tables were laden with bowls, meat platters, flowers. Kids were playing tag, running in and out of the cemetery carelessly.

Winifred caught Matt’s arm and motioned for him to slow down more. “Pretty little golden boy himself,” she murmured. Obie was standing with his head bowed in the cemetery. Winifred noticed that his stage sense had directed him to a spot where the morning sun’s rays slanting through the leaves of an old oak tree lighted up his silver blond head dramatically.

“His father’s grave,” Matt said. “Died a couple of years ago. Mother’s in a home somewhere, half crazed, calls herself the Mother of God.”

Winifred shivered. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. The more people I see the less kooky I think aliens, any aliens, are.”

Obie was meditating on the problems presented by the kid and the Daniels. And the mutt. It was sure to bark, raise a rumpus. Could poison it… He shook his head. Nothing ugly. A simple gathering-in of what was his, nothing ugly to look bad in court, if it came to that. Merton had the signature on the fake license, so—as far as the law was concerned, he was safe. A wedding had been performed six years ago by Reverend MacLeish. If it hadn’t been recorded properly, that wasn’t Obie’s fault. Florence wouldn’t talk, not with ten thousand bucks in her jeans, a husband and two brats of her own now. That just left the actual possession of the kid.

He turned back toward the church grounds and his eye caught Wanda Smith as she fed her mouth. His eyes narrowed. Wanda was fat, looked maternal as hell, and liked kids. Other people’s kids. She and Billy had none of their own. She’d be the one to make the snatch. It didn’t occur to him that Wanda might object. In his entourage no one objected. Oh, they bitched now and then, but they all went along with what he said. They knew where the shekels came from, Wanda knew. So while Reverend MacLeish preached that Sunday morning Obie planned. Two days later Wanda drove up to the corner of the subdivision where Blake was playing with three other small boys. She leaned out the window and called faintly. “Hey, boy, where is a doctor? I don’t feel well. I think I’m having an attack.”

Blake approached the car and studied her. He pointed silently but she shook her head. “Get in, tell me where to stop, will you?” Blake hesitated and she made a gasping noise. He got in the car and Wanda drove him straight to the airport, where the private plane belonging to the Voice of God Church was warmed up and ready. Meeting the car was Everett, who was a pharmacist after all; he held a capsule under Blake’s nose for a second and Blake drooped, half asleep, and they carried him aboard the plane.

An hour later Lisa opened her door to a Western Union boy and read the telegram he handed her with tears running down her cheeks. Matt left a partially undressed patient on a table and rushed home to read the same telegram. It had been dictated by Obie, smoothed out and made legal-sounding by Billy Warren Smith, and as Matt read it a second time, he knew it would stick.

It said, in effect, that Obie was claiming his legal son, whom Matt Daniels had kidnapped at birth. That if Matt Daniels fought this action, Obie would sue him and demand compensation and punishment of the culprits. A photostat of the wedding license would follow, as would a notarized statement from the mother of the child authorizing the father as the guardian, all duly witnessed and stamped. Obie had spent years and many thousands of dollars tracking down his son, and would fight through the courts for his right to keep the son with him. As an atheist, probably a Communist, and a free thinker, Matt stood absolutely no chance of having a decision brought down in his favor, and the harm to the child of a long involved legal battle might well be irreparable.

Matt’s attorney cursed fluently, at Matt as much as at Obie. They should have gone through the legal channels for adoption, etc.; Obie was a bastard who thought he could use the kid now, etc. But in the end the attorney agreed that Matt would not be able to sway a court, not in that section of the country. How many times had Matt taken the kid to church? To Sunday School? What was his own religious background? Lisa’s?

“So you are atheists, and Obie’s a heaven-inspired evangelist. I don’t know where in hell you could fight it out in court and not lose on those grounds alone.”

They tried to get an injunction to retain possession of the child while the case was pending, and they were refused. The judge said there was no case. The child was with his legal father where he belonged. There was no case.