Percy would leap out of bed in a frenzy and ferret from his suitcase the little black books in which he’d written up the history of his ministry, a literary labour undertaken as an assist to future biographers. He’d seek inspiration from page one, volume one, “The Day I Got the Call,” a recounting of the morning he’d stood, age five, in the alley behind his family’s bakery in Hornets Ridge, and served a communion of day-old Chelsea buns to a congregation of squirrels and chipmunks. As the rodents munched, tiny claws pressed together as if in prayer, the clouds had parted and a halo of sun had shone down around him, the sign of God’s anointing.
Percy’s mother encouraged his call, taking him to local meetings of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. He was an immediate sensation in his little blue blazer, grey flannel shorts, and bow tie, leaping to his feet as the Spirit moved, to preach away on the evils of drink. His father, a backsliding Baptist with a taste for bathtub gin, was none too pleased at his son’s denunciations. But as Percy reported, “The old devil said little, being generally passed out.”
While Percy’s religious vocation was attractive to rural women of a certain age, it caused trouble with the village boys, especially at recess, after he’d trumpeted their sins in front of the teacher. Percy didn’t mind. He wore his shiners proudly. “The badge of the Lord,” he called them. “‘For so persecuted they the prophets who came before me.’”
He took comfort from a postcard he’d received from famed baseball player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday. Sunday had been touched by the letter from the little boy from New Hampshire, who’d written for advice on how to handle an alcoholic father. His reply became Percy’s salvation, recognition from the next best thing to God Himself that he mattered in the world beyond Hornets Ridge. He waved the postcard under everyone’s nose, made it the frequent subject of school Show and Tells, and created a small shrine to it next to the Bible by his bed. At night, he’d kneel, clasp it in prayer, and, running his finger gently over the postage stamp, listen to the still voice of the Lord.
“Yea, God spake unto me through Reverend Billy’s postcard,” — (volume one, page 126) — “revealing a Great Plan, a Divine Destiny for His humble servant. In cause of my deep and abiding faith, He promised that the day would come when I would be summoned to preach His Gospel throughout the land, and would be known, now and for all eternity, as the greatest of His prophets in the New World.”
Like all prophets, Percy endured a time of testing. In his early twenties, he wandered off for a prayer retreat atop Mount Pawtuckaway. From its peak, he saw the fiery furnace of Shadrach, Meeshach, and Abednego brought unto Hornets Ridge. His father, in a drunken stupor, had pitched a tank of kerosene into the bakery oven; his family died instantly in the explosion.
Percy anguished. “Why had I been saved, while my mother and siblings had perished? The Lord spake unto me in my agony. He had need to temper my faith, He said, the better for it to withstand the temptations of Hell.”
Percy retreated to a shack outside the village. Here he prayed without cease, readying himself for the promised day when God would summon him to mission. A few elderly women who remembered him from the W.C.T.U. left plates of food and spare coins outside his door, but this was the extent of his following. Even village clergy kept their distance; they resented being called to account by a hermit half their age. Children, emboldened by their parents’ mockery, threw stones as he passed. He paid them no mind, his eyes alight with glory. Let them call him “Beggar Loon” and “Scarecrow”; he’d have the last laugh.
Sure enough, when he hit thirty, God smiled on His poor servant. Reggie Burns, praise Jesus, went and blew the heads off himself, wife Nellie, and Pittsburgh playboy Junior Bennett — and Percy Brubacher got his break.
Within four days of the murders, the Bennetts put their estate on the market, and sold its contents at auction. In “Sinner On My Doorstep” — little black book, volume three, pages 21 to 50 — Percy recalled the curious visit he’d received that evening from Floyd Cruickshank, a former classmate who minded the till at the general store where Percy bought soap, macaroni, and tacks. Floyd, ever the would-be dandy in his secondhand worsted windbreaker and matching plus-fours, rocked on the heels of his Oxfords and asked, “Could I have a word?”
Percy was wary. Since their school days, the most Floyd had ever said to him was, “That’ll be sixty-five cents.” But the Lord put a flea in Percy’s ear, so Perce said, “Fine.”
After a little this-and-that about the weather, Floyd got down to business. He’d been at the auction. “All day, folks ponied up to buy the Bennett’s effects. They claimed they wanted a piece of history. Bull. What they really wanted — you could see it in their eyes — was a piece of secondhand sin. They wanted to hang their hats on the rack where Nellie hung her cloth coat, or put their lips on Missy Bennett’s bone china, or — pardon my French — have a bounce in the sheets of a murdered adulterer.”
Percy nodded grimly. He imagined Satan’s flames licking the pillowcases.
“At the end of the day,” Floyd continued, “everything sold but the tent. No surprise. It’d take a pretty big backyard. Even repaired, the stains’d put a damper on get-togethers. Which is why I got it free for the hauling.”
Percy’s heart raced. “You got the tent?”
“Amen.” And now Floyd got serious. “Perce, we’ve known each other since we were kids. I’m ashamed to say I did you wrong.”
Percy could hardly breathe. He was suddenly back in the playground, swearing down God’s vengeance, as Floyd cleaned his clock. Again and again and again.
“I’m here to say I’m sorry,” Floyd said.
Percy’s eyes welled. “You’re sorry?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Very sorry. Forgive me?”
The next thing Percy knew, he was hugging Floyd and sobbing on his shoulder. Floyd eased him onto the porch step and handed him a handkerchief.
“I’m no do-gooder,” Floyd said quietly, as Percy blew his nose. “I’m just a sinner who wants to get the hell out of Hornets Ridge. That bloody tent’s my main chance. All afternoon, I’ve thought, if folks find thrills in tea towels, what’ll they find in the tent of horrors itself? Only thing is — I can’t just sell tickets. Respectable folks’ll need an excuse to go inside.”
“Maybe a sermon?” Percy blurted. He shook his fist over his head. “That tent is the Lord’s living proof, The Wages of Sin Is Death.”
“My thought exactly,” Floyd enthused. “A God-fearing barn burner on that theme’ll pack ’em in. But heck, Perce, I’m no speaker. I can barely sell toothpicks, much less God.”
“So the Lord has sent you unto me!”
“More or less.” Floyd stuck a finger in his collar. “I remember school, Perce. You gave me nightmares for weeks. No kidding. You were one scary bugger. So here’s what I’m driving at. You’re a preacher without a pulpit. I have a pulpit without a preacher. Whadeja say?”
“I say the Lord has worked a wonder in your heart, Brother Floyd!” Percy wrung out the handkerchief and gave his eyes another wipe. “Yea, it be murder, suicide, adultery, and drink have brung this tent unto us, but through our ministry shall innocent souls be snatched from the Pit. Oh Brother Floyd, I say unto you, all things work together for good for those who love the Lord. Let us pray.”
By midnight, Brother Percy was packed; he had but his Bible, his postcard, a few old clothes; a second pair of shoes, the soles patched together with squares of birch bark, bicycle tires, and tacks; a toothbrush and a comb; and his emerging set of little black books. Unable to sleep, he lit his kerosene lamp, and wandered to the cemetery to spend his last night in Hornets Ridge beside his mother’s grave. As he later wrote: