Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

The brimstone rained down, but it didn’t matter. Evangelism is to Southerners what valerian is to a cat. The congregation whuffed appreciatively, their Demosthenes, they felt, being as brilliant an orator as ever the Pnyx had cheered. Not for them, if for Darconville — Isabel was only bewildered — was it the trashiest piffle and most intolerable bit of fustian since the days of thundering Whitfield, circulating Summerfield, and weeping Payson. No, this for them was the Word, and its speaker — with hewing arms, a face pot-liquor green, and a mouthful of indicavits — might just as well have been preaching from a fishing-smack dead center in the Sea of Galilee or sending the Divine Message through the penal bars of the Mamertine dungeon. Cloogy banked on that as he pointed a finger straight into their faces.

“I be takin’ up a collection momentarily and will be axin’ you to reach down deep in your pockets to pull out some faith which in this part of the Holy Land, for outreach work and general upkeep, is colored green and crackles, ‘cause on your deathbed or, well, pallet, which is the same as a bed only narrower, you subscribers of sex and malfeasance, you ain’t gonna own nothin’, you ain’t gonna take nothin’, you ain’t gonna hear nothin’, not the thrum of a harp, not the carol of a bird, not the howl of a coon, not the whoooole doxology of congregations — doxology a big-city word for praise and glory, nothin’ else — so be warned, you fleshpeddlin’ spackies and shut-wallets and tithin’ nigglers! ‘You conceive chaff, you bring forth stubble!’ Isaiah 33:11 . But listen to me! Did I just say you gonna prance into heaven ‘cause you e-void honky houses? Did I just say you gonna prance into heaven ‘cause you ain’t backslidin’ but twicet a week? Did I just say you gonna prance into heaven, you rinsepitchin’, fist-clinching, pennypinching dah-warves, ‘cause you blow the horn in Gibeah and sound the trumpet in Ramah? I didn’t say any such of a thang ! No! No, no, no! You got to have faith , which means only trust — in God— a mot-to found on every dollar in the American mint! ‘Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe!’ Joel 3:13 . Here now, do I hear you reachin’ down now or is wickedness sweet in your mouth? O wheelbarrows, full of hates and hisses! O hard as stwones! I hear no jingle! I hear no jangle!”

Cloogy pulled no stops now as, before the congregation, he pumped and wheezed and bellowed. He hopped, capricornified, across the stage, glaring. When he put one foot down, he lifted the other up. He drove his fist down through the air as if knocking, peg-wise, every last metaphorical demon who dared lift his head. Barging up to the proscenium, he flung up his hands and with cheek-shaking fury let himself loose in bombs of rhetoric that hadn’t been felt in that part of the world since Calhoun addressed himself to the doctrine of state sovereignty. It was all advertisement, no news: the theatrically “shattered” voice, moistened with sobs; the S’s altered to Th’s; the farm analogies; the bird perch finger, wagging; the faraway look on the radiant face on the glorious horizon; and, of course, the slow but efficient whining that built up like feeding in small-arms ammunition which culminated, suddenly, in the rapid-fire of machine-gun prooftexting.

“I can’t believe it! The Lord can’t believe it! You tryin’ to abridge the Lord above, you hangdogs, you open compurgators of Satan, you soupsnufflin’ excuses of Og and Zedekiah and Tubal-Cain, whose face was black as soot! ‘Wail, O gate! Cry, O city! Melt in fear, O Philistia, all of you!’ Isaiah, 14:31 . There is your faith? Is Hell havin’ a banquet? Do I see you shootin’ into your pocket for contribution? Don’t Jesus count? I want every man, woman, boy, and girl to lift their hand high if they want Jesus to come hoppin’ into their flinty hearts! Lift them high! I ain’t gone be up here all day, friends, having work in the Holy Vineyard enough for a squad roon and outnumberin’ arithmetic itself! So hands up, c’mon, high— hah, hah, haher ! I cain’t haft see them, widow-ladies! I cain’t see them, poor oP gentmin in over-hauls! Or are you just a cootie? A stinkard? A inglorious piece of fat ram-mutton? Hah ! Wag your fingers! Hah ! Shoggle your wrists or somethin’! How many out there cain’t lift his hand to Goddlemighty? O how many! O! O! And now may we pray?”

Every hand, as if shot, suddenly fell as the organ began to swell. All grabbed hands tightly in a display of tactile prayer. A symphrase of indistinguishable nonsense ended up front punctuated with a burplike “amen,” and Rev. W. C. Cloogy, striding magnanimously forward— just minutes, presumably, before his Bethany-like ascension — made available to everyone there his pouchable goods, sundries, pigges’ bones, holy relikes. The purchases, came the assurance, were all in-structible, indestructible, and tax-deductable. Gimme that Ol’ Time Revision!

While Cloogy piously knelt, the collection baskets were passed, and Roy LeRoy sang, “If You Take Two Steps Toward Jesus, He’ll Take Three Steps Toward You.” The interlocutor in the raspberry shirt came forward and advised each and every soul — before the offers were either suspended or depleted — that he or she could personally own in his own home any one of the following: a glossy snapshot of Pastor Cloogy riding a dromedary across The Plains of Sharon ($1.25); a real pinion wrestled from an angel in the Land of Penuel ($6.00@); The Marvy Twins’ LP Album, Hymns for Her , featuring the much-requested national hit, “My Dropsy Cured One Night It Was” ($7.95); cigarette lighters with a microdot of Mt. Vernon on the strikeflint ($6.50@); a holy tablecloth showing Ishbosheth, King of Israel, Being Assassinated ($16.00); an actual vessel of bottled darkness from the plague visited by Moses upon Pharaoh ($12.75); stone piecelettes nicked from the Rock of Ages, glued to a card underneath the legend “America: Right or Wrong!” ($2.25); and, confirming, perhaps, the idea, widely held, that the evangelical mind is obsessed much more with bowel irregularity than anything else, packets of lenitive powders ground from Palestinian pistachio shells for the diagnostically restringent ($5.45 for twelve).

There were free hams, a gift only to those, however, who made offerings of over $20 or whose contributions exceeded the mean of the per capita tally that day as certified by the public accountant who, at that very moment, was collecting the envelopes at the end of each pew. Certificates of honor would be awarded, of course, to special contributors: Soul Winners ($500); Prayer Warriors ($300); Scripture Seekers ($100); and Youth Year-Arounds ($50).

As the choir sang “Arphaxad from the Flood He Swam,” the envelopes — a very small pile — were brought worshipfully forward and placed on the lip of the stage, where W. C. Cloogy, spying the size, had to bite his knuckles he was so angry, and then in one last fit of entheomania he came howling out at them in heat like the craven, great-gullied gastrolator he was, roaring horrisonously and, with nictating eyes, seeking for a final time to make mad mystery out of ignorance and inspiration out of dread. It was the high point of the show: the Decisions for Christ.

“Quail, O sinners! Cringe, O bedwarfed sons and daughters, and pray for dear life that the yield on the baskets will be bigger’n the envelopes ‘cause these here are lookin’ slimmer than a three-day fast! I don’t know from the next who’s holdin’ back, I swear. But take the Lord — you fancy He don’t know who tiddlywinkin’ buttons and pewter pennies my way in the name of tithes? That He don’t feel you weevilin’ your checkbook around in the dungeon of your filthy pockets? That He don’t see you peppin’ up on nekkid pictures in the corncrib or cropin’ down the backstairs at night like a red Commonist with your guilty little face all jellied up with lipstick and a dress on you tighter than a nigger’s thumbprint? Shoot, He don’t! — and the mercy is He don’t snipe you right there in your socks! For what’s He bound to think? Why, no evangel of Christ Jesus, you! No fellow-shipper of the Lord, Who died for your raggedy sins! No prophetess of adequate wardrobe, you! No advocate of Christian endeavor, you! No wise virgin with her range-oil lamp full, you! Well now, I’m about to give you one last chance to accept Christ Jesus as your personal savior, because, failing that, you poor bumblades, you lay whippin’ straight into Hell where you gone be roasted into a snuff-stick the second you arrive by flames cat-lappin’ up to your chin and head! Ezekiel 40:2 . You ask is hell hot, and I’ll ask is a bullfrog waterproof, OK? I tell you, you gone be stir-fried! Barbecued! Whipsawed back and forth by unnatural devils and squeezed ‘til your pips squeak! But you don’t cotton to all this ruckin’ and raisin’ sand back there, do you? Gettin’ creepy-bumps all over your flesh, ain’t you? Then stand up! Stand up, you pathetic examples of homo dumbiens! Stand up, you insolent arrogant sharpies! Grasshopper down here to the front of this church and in this year of Restored Salvation accept Christ Jesus into your life or you be swallowed up in perdition quicker nor an alligator can claw a puppy! Is there sin come between you and the Lord? Are you man enough to kneel down here with me and pray? Then come on down! O, come! Come!”