Stephen King - Song of Susannah

No, the one with the beard! He looks almost exactly like Henchick! Henchick of the Manni! Do you not see?

Mia neither saw nor cared. She gathered that although parking waggons along the yellow curb was forbidden, and the man with the beard seemed to understand this, he still would not move. He went on setting up easels and then putting pictures on them. Mia sensed this was an old argument between the two men.

“I’m gonna have to give you a ticket, Rev.”

“Do what you need to do, Officer Benzyck. God loves you.”

“Good. Delighted to hear it. As for the ticket, you’ll tear it up. Right?”

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; render unto God those things that are God’s. So says the Bible, and blessed be the Lord’s Holy Book.”

“I can get behind that,” said Benzyck o’ the Watch. He pulled a thick pad of paper from his back pocket and began to scribble on it. This also had the feel of an old ritual. “But let me tell you something, Harrigan-sooner or later City Hall is gonna catch up to your action, and they’re gonna render unto your scofflaw holy-rollin’ ass. I only hope I’m there when it happens.”

He tore a sheet from his pad, went over to the metal waggon, and slipped the paper beneath a black window-slider resting on the waggon’s glass front.

Susannah, amused: He’s gettin a ticket. Not the first one, either, from the sound.

Mia, momentarily diverted in spite of herself: What does it say on the side of his waggon, Susannah?

There was a slight shift as Susanna came partway forward, and the sense of a squint. It was a strange sensation for Mia, like having a tickle deep in her head.

Susannah, still sounding amused: It says church of the holy god-bomb, Rev. Earl Harrigan. It also says your contributions WILL BE REWARDED IN HEAVEN.

What’s heaven?

Another name for the clearing at the end of the path.

Ah.

Benzyck o’ the Watch was strolling away with his hands clasped behind his back, his considerable ass bunching beneath his blue uniform trousers, his duty done. The Rev. Harrigan, meanwhile, was adjusting his easels. The picture on one showed a man being let out of jail by a fellow in a white robe. The whiterobe’s head was glowing. The picture on the other showed the whiterobe turning away from a monster with red skin and horns on his head. The monster with the horns looked pissed like a bear at sai Whiterobe.

Susannah, is that red thing how the folk of this world see the Crimson King?

Susannah: I guess so. It’s Satan, if you care - lord of the underworld. Have the god-guy get you a cab, why don’t you? Use the turtle.

Again, suspicious (Mia apparently couldn’t help it): Do you say so?

Say true! Aye! Say Jesus Christ, woman!

All right, all right. Mia sounded a bit embarrassed. She walked toward Rev. Harrigan, pulling the scrimshaw turtle out of her pocket.

What she needed to do came to Susannah in a flash. She withdrew from Mia (if the woman couldn’t get a taxi with the help of that magic turtle, she was hopeless) and with her eyes squeezed shut visualized the Dogan. When she opened them, she was there. She grabbed the microphone she’d used to call Eddie and depressed the toggle.

“Harrigan!” she said into the mike. “Reverend Earl Harrigan! Are you there? Do you read me, sugar? Do you read me? ”

Rev. Harrigan paused in his labors long enough to watch a black woman-one fine-struttin honey, too, praise God-get into a cab. The cab drove off. He had a lot to do before beginning his nightly sermon-his little dance with Officer Benzyck was only the opening gun-but he stood there watching the cab’s taillights twinkle and dwindle, just the same.

Had something just happened to him?

Had…? Was it possible that…?

Rev. Harrigan fell to his knees on the sidewalk, quite oblivious of the pedestrians passing by (just as most were oblivious of him). He clasped his big old praise-God hands and raised them to his chin. He knew the Bible said that praying was a private thing best done in one’s closet, and he’d spent plenty of time getting kneebound in his own, yes Lord, but he also believed God wanted folks to see what a praying man looked like from time to time, because most of them-say Gawd! -had forgotten what that looked like. And there was no better, no nicer place to speak with God than right here on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. There was a singing here, clean and sweet. It uplifted the spirit, clarified the mind… and, just incidentally, clarified the skin, as well. This wasn’t the voice of God, and Rev. Harrigan was not so blasphemously stupid as to think it was, but he had an idea that it was angels. Yes, say Gawd, say Gawd-bomb, the voice of the ser-a-phim!

“God, did you just drop a little God-bomb on me? I want to ask was that voice I just heard yours or mine own?”

No answer. So many times there was no answer. He would ponder this. In the meantime, he had a sermon to prepare for. A show to do, if you wanted to be perfectly vulgar about it.

Rev. Harrigan went to his van, parked at the yellow curb as always, and opened the back doors. Then he took out the pamphlets, the silk-covered collection plate which he’d put beside him on the sidewalk, and the sturdy wooden cube. The soapbox upon which he would stand, could you raise up high and shout hallelujah?

And yes, brother, while you were right at it, could you give amen?

By the time they reached the little shopping center in the town of Bridgton-a supermarket, a laundry, and a surprisingly large drugstore-both Roland and Eddie sensed it: not just the singing, but the gathering power. It lifted them up like some crazy, wonderful elevator. Eddie found himself thinking of Tinkerbell’s magic dust and Dumbo’s magic feather. This was like drawing near the rose and yet not like that. There was no sense of holiness or sanctification in this little New England town, but something was going on here, and it was powerful.

Driving here from East Stoneham, following the signs to Bridgton from back road to back road, Eddie had sensed something else, as well: the unbelievable crispness of this world. The summer-green depths of the pine forests had a validity he had never encountered before, never even suspected. The birds which flew across the sky fair stopped his breath for wonder, even the most common sparrow. The very shadows on the ground seemed to have a velvety thickness, as if you could reach down, pick them up, and carry them away under your arm like pieces of carpet, if you so chose.

At some point, Eddie asked Roland if he felt any of this.

“Yes,” Roland said. “I feel it, see it, hear it… Eddie, I touch it.”

Eddie nodded. He did, too. This world was real beyond reality. It was… anti -todash. That was the best he could do. And they were very much in the heart of the Beam. Eddie could feel it carrying them on like a river rushing down a gorge toward a waterfall.

“But I’m afraid,” Roland said. “I feel as though we’re approaching the center of everything-the Tower itself, mayhap. It’s as if, after all these years, the quest itself has become the point for me, and the end is frightening.”