Warren Murphy - The Arms of Kali

"What ails you, brother?" asked the Reverend, Tee Vee Walker, a boom of a man with a rutted black face and large hands that glistened with gold and diamonds. His was the Church of the Instant Savior. "Business is bad," said Ban Sar Din.

"What business you in?" asked the Reverend Walker.

"Religion business," said Ban Sar Din.

"You in the life, then?" chuckled the Reverend Walker, and when Ban Dar Sin explained he was running an Indian religion, the Reverend Walker asked his weekly take.

"It used to be good, but costs have gotten out of hand."

"Don' know how to handle costs, excep' don' have none. What I always do is take the ugliest woman in the choir and give her some heavy lovin' and then make her in charge of all the costs. She figure out how to pay. Learned from my Daddy, he be a preacher too, one of your basic no-frills yell-in-their-face gospel preachers. You can go anywhere with that. Yell in their faces."

"I have a different sort of gospel," Ban Sar Din said.

"They all the same. It be what people buyin'."

"It's not the same. I'm afraid of my congregation."

"Pack one of these," said the Reverend Walker. It was a little silvery automatic. He explained that it was unseemly for a minister to carry a large pistol, but a pearl-handled automatic could fit in a jacket or trouser pocket. His father, he said, used to carry a switchblade.

"But mine are crazy," Ban Sar Din said. "I mean real crazies. You just can't yell in their faces. You don't understand."

"Listen, little fat fella. I'm not rescuing yo' congregation for nothing. I'll show you how to work the pulpit," the Reverend Walker said. "But I get the day's offerings. "

"You can yell in their faces?"

"I can whip yo' congregation into a pack of little puppies. And when I got them where you want 'em, remember ... give the ugliest woman some loving and let her solve yo' problems for you."

Ban Sar Din gauged the big man's size again. Perhaps. Perhaps he might get them in line. And once they were in line, Ban Sar Din might be able to get them into more profitable areas, might be able to convince them that coming back with forty dollars in a rumal was a sin, especially in these times when forty dollars didn't even get you a first-class meal with dessert.

"All right, nigger," Ban Sar Din said. "A deal."

"What's that word yo' say?" asked the Reverend Tee Vee Walker.

"It's wrong?"

"Only a nigger can use the word 'nigger.' "

"Everybody calls me 'nigger,' " Ban Sar Din said, in great confusion. "I thought that made us blood brothers or something."

"Not you. You brown enough, but you talk funny."

"The British imperialists forced us to learn this funny talk," said Ban Sar Din, catching in a single sentence the basic doctrine of the third-world theology; namely that no matter what happened, one had to blame it on some white men. That done, anything was acceptable.

The Reverend Walker did not find a pulpit in the ashram. There was a bare wood floor, well polished, a statue of their saint, which had too many arms and an ugly face, and not even the smell of something cooking somewhere. Just some very quiet, very white, very young people walking around.

"When do services begin?" the Reverend Walker asked Ban Sar Din.

"I don't know. They begin them themselves most of the time."

"This has got to stop right heayah. You run the church, or the church runs you. Let's lay some gospel down on their heads."

He noticed a blond girl, quite excited, her cheeks flushed with joy. For this occasion only, for his pudgy brown brother only, he would make an exception about the ugliest woman in the congregation. One had to take care of the good-looking ones too.

Reverend Walker flashed his broadest smile and stepped in front of the statue at which everyone was looking.

"Brothers and sisters," he boomed. He wished he had a pulpit to bang. He wished he had chairs to look at, faces to look back at him. But half these people had their heads down on the floor and the other half were only trying to look past him toward the statue.

"We got to move on to be right on," yelled the good Reverend Tee Vee Walker. "Man can't walk, man can't talk. If you pray, you pay."

People still didn't look at him. He thought that that should have worked. It hardly ever failed. One black preacher had even run for president by trying to reduce the nuclear-technological age to seven-year-old rhymes.

The reverend didn't know why these whites weren't responding.

If he couldn't get them with preaching, he would try singing.

His rich voice boomed out over the throng, calling for sweet understanding, bemoaning suffering, calling for trust. He liked the way he could bring it all up from his toes. But they still didn't respond. And it was good singing, too.

The Reverend Walker began to clap. No Walker had ever lost a congregation, not in four generations of preachers, and he wasn't going to be the first. He stamped his feet. He yelled some more at their heads, and no one even noticed him.

Then the pretty little blond girl smiled at him and nodded him into a side room.

The Reverend Tee Vee Walker did not miss that smile. So there were other ways to bring a congregation into line. He knew them all. He winked back and followed the girl into the room.

"Hi," she said.

"Hello there," said the Reverend.

"Can I just get this around your neck?" came a voice from behind him.

So these whites did groups. "Any neck you want," he said with a broad smile.

And there was number 108.

Ban Sar Din was waiting in his private devotion office when he heard a knock on the door. They were calling him to appear before Her.

Good, he thought. The reverend has finally gotten them into line.

But there was no Reverend Walker. Just a small group holding one of those silly yellow handkerchiefs. He didn't remember any groups going out now, but then again, they weren't telling him everything anymore either. He wondered what they had in the rumal this time. Loose change? He looked around the ashram, but saw no sign of the minister. Maybe he had done his job and left.

"She loved it," said one of the followers.

Ban Sar Din reached into his pocket. No cloth. He looked at the upturned faces of his followers. The crazies were going to kill him if he didn't have a fresh rumal. Maybe strangle him with their bare hands.

"We await, Holy One," said the kid from Indianapolis who had taken to calling himself the phansigar. There were several of them now.

"Right. Waiting," said Ban Sar Din. "Waiting is perhaps the fullest way of service to our holy Kali."

"Did you forget the rumal?" asked the kid from Indianapolis.

"Forgetting is a form of worship. Why does one remember? That is the question we must all ask ourselves," said the pudgy little man. He felt sweat forming in his underpants, and his mouth was dry. He tried to smile. If he smiled, they might not think he was getting ready to run for it.

He made a sign of blessing he had seen somewhere. Oh, no. It was the sign of the cross, and he carefully did the motions again, backward, as if erasing his previous moves.

"Thus Kali erases false doctrine," he said unctuously. If he ran for it, could he get away? he wondered. "You have forgotten the rumal, the holy blessed rumal with which we serve Her," said the yellow-haired girl from Denver. She was the one who frightened him most. He had gathered indirectly that she loved the death throes even more than the male followers did.

"Let us all praise Kali now," said Ban Sar Din. He backed toward the door. If he could get a jump on these crazy white kids, he might make it into the alley and then out of New Orleans. He could always lose weight and pick pockets again. And even if he failed, there was always jail. At least, he would still be alive. It was an incredibly appealing thought.