For a time, God’s Promise looked to be fulfilled. As recorded in Percy’s little black books, those were the glory days, a time of redemption with Satan on the run. The Bennett murders packed the tent that whole first summer; and come frost, Floyd had finagled invitations from the Deep South, where righteous brethren from the hills of Arkansas to the Florida orange groves were keen on hellfire sermons featuring Yankee sinners bobbing in brimstone.
The collections had been equally good: love-offering envelopes sufficiently stuffed to keep up payments on the truck, and on that marble angel for his mother, which he’d got at a discount on account of the left wing being chipped in transit, though not so’s you’d notice, praise the Lord. There was even enough to shell out for beds in private hotels; these inspired more uplifting prayers than those delivered from lumpy mattresses in the basements of local deacons. Nor did the evangelists stint on such accommodation. As Floyd pointed out, “Jesus may have preached to whores, but stay in some flophouse, you think there won’t be talk?”
The evangelists also agreed that the Almighty wanted His employees to look their best. “Rags and sandals are fine for Bible times, but holes in the socks make a lousy advertisement for the Kingdom of God.” So Percy got himself outfitted with two navy, off-the-rack suits from Tip Top Tailors, three starched white shirts, one pair of suspenders, and a snazzy charcoal-grey fedora.
Percy kept a careful tally of all such expenditures on the flesh in his little black books. Here, too, he recorded tallies of the tent’s nightly take, as well as the count of those who hit the sawdust trail, parading up the aisle to fill out decision cards for the Lord. Some of these converts made a habit of getting saved. If Percy knew, he didn’t let on. He was proud of his numbers, and prayed they’d be celebrated like those of his hero, Brother Billy, whose salvation stats had been touted in box scores on the front pages of dailies from L.A. to Washington, Albuquerque to New York.
Percy’s triumphs, however, went unheralded. Local reporters covering the arrival of the tent simply wrote a rehash of the murders. “Those degenerate fornicators get more ink than I do,” Percy groused. To add insult to injury, no one appeared to know how to spell “Brubacher,” an indignity that invariably set Percy to work on some variation of the following letter-to-the-editor.
Dear Buttonbrook Gleaner,
Buttonbrook should count itself good and lucky to have had the internationally renowned revivalist Brother Percy Brubacher preaching out at the bandstand last Saturday night. He has chased the Devil out of Arkansas, Rhode Island, and points between. So it is a crying shame that your editor is so ignorant as to spell his name with a “k.” This is an embarrassment to your paper, a black day for Buttonbrook, and an insult to the Reverend Brother Brubacher, who is more famous than the lot of you put together.
Yours sincerely,
Mr. Herb Potts
As time rolled on, attendance at the tent began to thin. The Bennett killings were stale, jostled out of the spotlight by Al Capone, the Lindbergh baby, and above all else the fallout of the Great Crash. It’s hard to raise a sweat over the death of some playboy when big city skies are raining bankers.
The Depression did more than upstage their act. While a few churches continued to play host, most cut off invitations lest dwindling tithes be siphoned to the competition: charity begins at home. Consequently, Brothers Percy and Floyd had to underwrite production costs, while fending off accusations that they were stealing bread from the mouths of local widows and orphans. It was a strain, especially as the offering envelopes they were accused of filching were increasingly stuffed with newspaper.
Costs up, revenues down, the evangelists scaled back. They lodged at modest bed and breakfasts, which had the attraction of landladies prepared to darn socks, or raise pant hems to disguise frayed cuffs. There was a price for this needlework: widows with a clutch of dead lace at their throats and habitations appointed with dusty bouquets of dried flowers. Such would insist on favouring them with recitals at the parlour piano. “Do you ever dream of domestic bliss?”
The Widow Duffy was a terror in this regard. Her attentions to Brother Percy caused the poor man much consternation, especially at night when she prowled the corridors, ultimately surprising him in the biffy. “Get thee behind me Satan,” he cried, scrambling to cover his privates. The Widow Duffy claimed herself an innocent sleepwalker, but Percy was no fool. “She meant to have her way with me,” he whispered to Brother Floyd. “We must quit this den by daybreak: ‘Flee from temptation, nor let the shadow of it come nigh!’”
While Percy knew the Bible, he scarcely knew himself. Sex was no temptation to him whatsoever. An enthusiastic virgin, he held the entire process to be as distasteful as it was messy, a dirty chore necessary to propagate worshippers. Fortunately, being a preacher, he’d been given a more dignified means to populate the Kingdom, and a damn sight more sanitary to boot.
Floyd, on the other hand, laboured under no such misapprehensions. Frankly, the Widow Duffy’s nocturnal ramblings had aroused more than his curiosity. “Brother Percy,” he admonished, “we have a Christian duty to remain. If that dame sleepwalks unattended, she may fall down the stairs and break her neck.”
“Don’t think to pull the wool over my eyes,” Percy scolded. “You’ve a mind to spill your seed in that harlot! How shall you answer up to Jesus at the end time?”
“Nag, nag, nag. If I wanted a wife I’d have married one.”
“Repent or burn!”
“Go suck an egg.”
Percy stormed off, spending the rest of the night at the local fleabag. He didn’t sleep. Then again, neither did Floyd. Yet whereas Percy spent the morning’s drive to the next town muttering into his Bible, Floyd was frisky as a pup, pedal to the metal, whistling rags. They stopped for gas. Brother Percy closed the Good Book and held it to his breast. He cast a baleful gaze in the direction of his colleague.
Silence.
“What?” Floyd demanded.
God’s prophet flared his nostrils. “Apostate!”
Brothers Percy and Floyd never again shared accommodation. Percy confined himself to respectable S.R.O.s with sharp-eyed proprietors who snooped the halls to nix shenanigans amongst unmarried guests. Famous for shared baths with rust-stained sinks, the smell of mothballs, and the sound of lonely geriatrics weeping at all hours behind closed doors, these hotels were a perfect match for the evangelist. Once management realized he was alone, they paid no heed to his arguments with the dresser mirror.
Floyd, truth to tell, had always kept his pump primed. He’d simply held off till Percy’d fallen asleep, figuring it was better to sneak off like a kid out for a smoke than to set himself up for sermonizing in the truck. He’d had nightmares of being strapped to the wheel with Percy haranguing him from North Bay to Memphis. But discovery of Floyd’s appetites had put a cork in Brother Percy’s pipes; his censure registered instead by heavy sighs. This was a mite creepy on all-night drives, but a definite improvement over the yapping to which Floyd had hitherto been subjected.
As Percy’s private life grew progressively solitary, his nature became more bilious. “Billy Sunday wasn’t stuck in hicksvilles with a whoremonger! He was beloved! Adored! It isn’t fair!” His theology followed his mind into nightmare, his God transformed from disciplinarian to