Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

Their applause takes them away from the newcomer. Hear, hear!

The lulled crowd awakens, as Dowse can no longer help himself. “Because freedom from a British king is no longer enough! The time has come for his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth!”

The crowd waves their hands and they move about in the clearing, nodding in assent. Dowse watches them stamp their feet and run in place, some in circles like horses.

The boy fights the farmer’s hold.

“We do speak the same language, brother.” He points to the boy’s father, at the foot of the stage. “But what do you care for rain? I know what it is you seek,” he says, swirling and grasping the torch, leaving fire trails in the air. “Liberty in body and soul! Our fathers, and our grandfathers, our brothers and sons all died for us, for this nation. I swear it was God gave us victory!”

The crowd cheers. They raise their knees and run in place, spending the Spirit that fills them too full.

“It was Captain Christ who gave us revolution!”

A birdcall echoes and the crowd shouts, Amen! Amen! Amen!

“He offers salvation in this world, and a salvation from it!”

The man stays beside the stage, tickled and pleased, even admiring. He is immersed in the great show.

“A constitution,” Dowse shouts, “written by the heads of a Wild Beast! This is your land, yours! This place marked by His High Holy Spirit! Heal this place with me, and wait not for others. Heal thyself! Forsake the Pharisee help of doctors, and lawyers, of judges, and make of this land the Lord’s backyard. Forsake earthly princes and kings! For none of them know my name, and they know not your name! What lay in my heart is sin, God knows, but that He knows means He is within me. And I swear He knows my name!” He leans toward the salesman smiling by the stage. “You look at me good, now, brother.”

“Oh, I’m looking.” The man laughs.

“He knows your name, too, good stranger.”

The boy shouts, “Daddy!”

Dowse looks, and sees the nigger is back, and now expertly takes hold of the large farmer, squeezes him from behind as if hugging him. The farmer’s arms release the boy. The boy falls to the ground and stumbles, slipping in the mud. The farmer looks to be asleep in the dirt, and disappears as the crowd envelops him. The boy is pushing his way through the crowd. Pushing his way toward the stage. What tenacity, what strength, what faith, this child.

Dowse turns to the man, and says: “You are but a child in His eyes! And He knows every corner of your sinning soul, but that He knows is good news. Be sure.” He wags a flagging torch before the gathering, and a thunder crack breaks above the hills. A flash of lightning paints white light across the clearing — a brief and moon-white glimpse of a hundred faces, a shock-still dance in the glare. He extends an open hand to the laughing man. He laughs along with him, a joyous yawp.

The man yells up to the preacher, openly admiring his showmanship, and shouts, “You tricky son of a bitch!” The rain slaps down on both of their faces.

* * *

The sky has opened up like a cataract, a down-pouring of rain. The man stands at the front of the gathering, still some hundred feet away, shaking hands with the preacher.

Cotten lowers the boy to the ground. “I’ll go with you.”

The rain falls in wet slicing sheets, as the field goes muddy. The faithful are running in place in the rain. They dance, fueling themselves into a fervor. Cotten pulls back at the boy, his thick hand on Orr’s thin wrist. The crowd lose themselves ecstatically in the shower. Their wet hands open and waiting.

Cotten shouts, holding the boy’s wrist, “Don’t get lost!”

The boy pulls away. “Let me go!”

The man is laughing along with the preacher.

But Orr knows his father’s take on preachers, and still the man shakes hands with the preacher. Then comes a rush of onlookers in a wet wave of legs and bellies. Orr is caught between two strange women. His face is hot, the rain is cold, and he loses sight of his father.

“Ask and ye shall receive!” says the preacher.

The dancing is now at fever pitch, while some run in place and some in circles. The worshippers exhaust themselves, they empty themselves, and bells ring out in the rain.

Orr is pulled away. A woman on her knees pulls him closer.

Cotten’s thick hand comes grabbing, but the wet palm slides down along Orr’s arm, and the shaking crowd swallows Cotten whole. The woman on her knees is singing. Pale as death, she is old, and dank with rain. She sings a song Orr cannot understand. He sees through the wetness of her dress, and looks away. He’s losing his breath, and the cold slapping water on his warm skin makes him go blurry inside. He looks between the moving bodies and the ribbons of rain for his father, Where’s my daddy? The crowd pushes him closer to the stage. They push him as he shouts for his father. He falls and he rolls to the ground.

A strong thick hand reaches out for him.

Orr shouts out, “Let me go!”

Cotten lifts the boy. “You’ll see better from my shoulders.” But Orr wrestles against the big man as the white onlookers watch, Let me go.

“Let the boy go!”

Dowse looks for the boy.

Another voice, “Get your paws off that boy!”

Dowse sees the nigger make a path for the boy, and then squat low, his round head no longer heads high above the others, as he sidles off stealthily into the crowd. This pleases Dowse. God be with you, black. “See God’s children sacralize this land with their worship!” he shouts. “Today is a day for our Lord and God, so give yourself to Christ and die this day. Kill off your old ways and come back born in His Spirit!”

Orr slips through the wet limbs and falls to the floor. Picks himself up and moves toward the front of the stage, can’t see his daddy from here, and the fear is getting colder. He falls again just before the stage, face streaked with mud.

“And He comes with a great big stick! A brand-new Heaven and a brand-new Earth. Because the End is oh so near, I swear! And this time I know is the right time, the only time, for this generation will not pass before the Day of the Coming of the Lord! A revolution of God’s own making, and no longer do we live in a time for waiting. And these years made holy are almost over, the Christ is finally come. See Him come even now in the hills, strolling like the walking sun, the trees like grass below His feet. For His head stays dry in the heavens, and His feet are wet in the Earth. Because Death has no sway on the Coming of the Lord. And Death will have no more dominion! Where is thy sting? Where is thy victory, O Death? See our Christ, He is come!”

Dowse drops to his knees.

There is a flash of lightning in the rain — then wait — wait for the buckshot of thunder.

Orr steps to the riser, Help me up.

He waves to his father, whose mouth is agape as he looks at the crowd.

What is happening to this great crowd? Then peripherally, miraculously, most unexpectedly of all there manifests a young boy who, to the man, looks like his son. What on earth are you doing here, boy? Get you away from that stage!

The preacher, too, lifts his head. His eyes go wide, bearing witness to yet another miracle.

Orr turns away from his father, and looks to the crowd. Slow and strange, the world presses in on his skin. His forehead broils in the cold rain, wet and cold, never been hot and so cold. Torches spatter as an unlikely wave of flesh and human spirit falls away from the stage; there is a slow heave and falling of people. They turn sluggish, deathlike, and tired, a hundred souls or more. Muscles relaxing, and down they go like husks falling from spent spirits; they exhaust themselves in exercise and enthusiasm for the returning Lord. They fall. They all fall to the ground like one vast body of so many parts, and fall into what looks like a slumber. Mounds of mud and sleep; is this death? He’s frightened by the hundred fallen, the freshly threshed. They lie in the field like war dead.