Ken Kesey - Demon Box

"What's this?" Mr. Keller-Brown asks. He has to pry it from the little tyke's fingers. "We better give this back to Mrs. Whittier, Tobe." He hands me the necklace but I go over and open the little, desk top and drop it in amongst the Crayolas.

"It's Toby's," I told them, "not mine." I said an angel came down and gave it to Toby in his dreams. Toby nods sober as an owl and says Yeah, Daddy, an angel, and adds – because of the cameo face on it was why, I guess – "A white angel."

Then Otis hollers, "Let's boogie for Jesus!" and we all go out.

We'd parked kind of on the road because the parking area (what used to be Emerson T's best permanent pasture) was full to overflowing – cars, buses, campers, and every sort of thing. The Worship Fair was going like a three-ring circus. There was people as thick as hair on a dog sitting around, strolling around, arguing, singing. A long-haired skinny young fellow without shoes or shirt was clamping a flyer under every windshield wiper, and a ways behind him another longhair was sticking christ's the one to the bumpers and sneaking off the flyers when the first kid wasn't looking. The first one caught the second and there then ensued a very hot denominational debate. Otis went over with his sword to straighten it all out and pass out some flyers of his own.

Across the orchard I could see they'd built a stage on the foundation where the house used to stand. At the microphone a girl was playing a zither and singing scripture in a nervous shaky voice. Devlin asked me if I knew the verse she was singing and playing. I says I thought the singing vas verse than the playing, but it vas a toss-up.

Back behind the stage we found Betsy and the kids. The kids wanted to give me my presents right off but Betsy told them to wait for the cake. The men went off to take care of getting the next act onstage and I went off with Betsy and the kids to look how their garden already was coming up. Caleb led Toby on ahead through the gate, hollering, "I'll show you something, Toby, that I bet you don't have in your garden." And Betsy told me that it was a mama Siamese, had her nest in the rhubarb.

"She just has one kitten. She had six hidden out in the hay barn but Devlin backed the tractor over five of them. She brought the last one into the garden. He's old enough to wean but that mama cat just won't let him out of the rhubarb."

We strolled along, looking how high the peas were and how the perennials had stood the big freeze. When we got to the rhubarb there was little Toby amongst the leaves hugging the kitten and grinning for all he was worth.

"That's the first time I seen the little scoot smile," I told Betsy.

"Toby can't have our kitten, can he, Mom?" Caleb asks. Betsy says if it's all right with his folks it was most decidedly all right with her. I said with all the traffic maybe we'd better leave the kitty in the garden until he asks his mama. The smile went away but he didn't turn loose. He stood there giving us a heart-tugging look. Betsy said he could carry it if he was careful. "We'll ask M'kehla," she says.

All the rest of the afternoon Toby hung on to that cat for dear life, Caleb worrying at him from one side and the anxious mama cat from the other.

Sherree took me in to show me her new curtains and we all had some mint tea. We could hear things out at the stage getting worked up. We moseyed back just as an all-boy chorus from Utah was finishing up. People had commenced to push in towards the stage so's it was pretty thick, but the kids had saved me a nice shady spot with a blanket and some of those tie-dyed pillows.

I didn't see Devlin or Mr. Keller-Brown, but that Otis, he was impossible to miss. He was reeling around in front of the stage making a real spectacle of himself, getting all tripped up in his sword, which was worked round between his legs, hollering Hallelujah and Amen and Remember Pearl Harbor. And somebody had spray-painted across the rump of his baggy pants: "The Other Cheek." I told Betsy he hadn't better turn that other cheek to me if he knew what was good for him.

The announcer was one of the local ministers. After the all-boys from Utah he asked if we couldn't have a little quiet and a little respect – he said this right at Otis, too – "a little respect for one of the all-time great gospel groups of all time: The Sounding Brass!" I says good, just in time, and sits me down on one of them pillows.

It started just like in Colorado Springs; a gong was rung backstage, soft and slow at first, then faster and faster and louder and louder. It's very effective. Even Otis set down. The gonging rose and rose until you thought the very sky was gonna open and, when you thought you couldn't stand it a moment more, made one last hard loud bang and they came running on stage and went right into "Ring Them Bells," the world-famous Sounding Brass.

At first I thought we all had been tricked! The Sounding Brass? These five old butterballs? Why, the Sounding Brass is tall and lean with natural red hair that shines like five halos, not these sorry old jokes. Because I mean to tell you the men didn't have a hundred scraggly old white hairs divided between the four of them! Plus the woman was wearing a wig looked like it had been made out of wire and rusted. And I'm darned if she didn't have on a minidress! I could see the veins from fifty feet away.

I finally just shook my head; it was them, all right. All their movements and gestures were exactly those I remembered. But it looked like they'd been set to moving and then forgot the grease. And their voices, they were just horrible. I don't mean old – I know a lot of older groups who sing fine, creaks, whistles, and all – I mean thin, hollow, like whatever had been there had been scraped away and left five empty shells. I recall reading how they'd had a lot of income tax problems; maybe that done it. But they were surely pathetic. They finished a couple of songs and people give them a little hand of pure charity. Then Jacob Brass stepped to the microphone.

"Thank you and buh- less you all," he says. "Now, the next number… well, we hear from reliable sources that it is the favorite of a very fine lady out there having her birthday on this beautiful spring day. Eighty-six years young. So puh- raise the Lord this Good Friday song is especially ded -icated to our Good Friday Birthday Girl, Mrs. Rebecca Whittier!"

I wanted to dig a hole and crawl in it. And let me tell you: if they sounded bad on their faster numbers they now sounded downright pitiful. To make matters worse that dad-blamed Otis got going again. They'd sing, "Were you there… when they nailed Him to the cross?" and Otis would answer back, "Not me, youse mugs! I was in Tarzana drinking Orange Juliuses I can prove it!" loud enough the people got to laughing. Which of course only encouraged him.

"Pierced Him in the side? Ech. I wasn't there then, either. I don't even go t' roller derby."

The Brass family was so peeved by the laughter that to the secret relief of all they stalked offstage as soon as they finished two choruses, absolutely furious.

Betsy says she's sorry my favorite number got messed up and I says me too, but little Toby says, very seriously, that it'll be alright, because here comes his folks. Then did the crowd hoop and holler! The Birds of Prayer was the other end of the stick from the Brass family. They pranced out all in purple, Mr. Keller-Brown and another big black fellow with a beard, and three pretty little colored girls. The fellow with the beard played organ and sung bass, and Mr. Keller-Brown played those big native drums and kind of come in now and then, talking to them. The three colored girls sung and played guitars and shook tambourines. After the Brass family they were like a breath of fresh air. My grandson comes through the crowd toward us, bouncing up and down to the rhythm.