The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish Read online

  “It’s about Ralph,” Albert whispered, his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s serious this time.”

  Grace crossed her arms. It was always serious with Belle. She knew about Belle’s begging letters, the ones Albert hid in the shoebox under his side of the bed. If the Beeford farm wasn’t being eaten by locusts, it was dying of drought, or suffering dust storms so ferocious they buried livestock whole. Could Albert send a little money? Just a little? For seed? To fix the tractor? To replace the henhouse carried off in the last twister? “Please, Albert, I beg of you. Ralph and I will be eternally in your debt.” Wasn’t that the God’s own truth.

  Albert always gave in. “Times are tough,” he’d say. Well, except for the likes of Rockefeller, life hadn’t been a cakewalk for anyone since the Crash, now had it? Besides, what was the point of buying seed, or repairs, or a henhouse, when Ralph Beeford couldn’t pay his mortgage? Sure enough, three months ago Ralph and Belle had lost the farm, and all the savings that Albert had shovelled their way had gone up the flue with it. Now, as the prodigals sat waiting for the bailiff to evict them, scarce a day went by without Belle scribbling even more letters; letters which, after much prayer, Grace had been led to intercept and misplace in her wood stove. With Belle so hard up, Grace wanted to know how she could afford so many stamps. And now this telephone call.

  “It’s serious,” Albert repeated. “Ralph’s taken to reading the Book of Revelation. Tonight he brought the shotgun in from the barn. Belle’s with Timmy at their neighbours. There’s enough in the cookie jar to send Timmy here before Ralph does something we’ll all regret.”

  Grace tightened the belt of her housecoat: How could he lay that guilt on her shoulders?

  “The Lord never gives us more than we can bear,” Albert said.

  Grace had her doubts.

  Her suspicions were confirmed the morning she and Albert met Timmy at the station. Despite the long journey, he’d bounced from the train the image of mischief incarnate: dirty hands, smudged face, and clothes fit for the oil drum.

  Grace recognized him from the Brownie snapshot Belle had sent the previous Christmas. “So you’re Timmy,” she said. “I’m your aunt Grace and this is Uncle Albert. Let’s save the hugs till we get you washed up, shall we?”

  A scrub with a lather of soap and a rough facecloth had revealed dimples the size of dimes, like the dents of baby fingers plunged in pastry dough, and a mass of freckles — a spill of cinnamon on rice pudding. Aunt Grace sniffed. Oh yes, this was a face that spelled trouble; the acorn doesn’t drop very far from the tree.

  “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Albert said.

  From what Grace could make out, the cover was the least of their tribulations. Bullfrogs, cowpies, firecrackers, and stink bombs fascinated the Wichita kid, especially in combination and indoors, as did bodily functions and any hair-raising experiment involving fire and combustibles. When she and Albert demanded that Timmy explain why he had done this or that, he had two cheerful all-purpose replies: “Because” and “To see what would happen.”

  Why did God create little boys? Aunt Grace wondered. Give a girl a doll and she’d sit happily under the dining room table all afternoon and play house. Give Timmy a doll and within two shakes its limbs were clogging up the toilet.

  Aunt Grace tried to curb Timmy’s instincts. When she caught him playing cops and robbers she confiscated the toy gun he’d swiped from Kresge’s. Without batting an eye, he replaced it with a stick. When she forbade him playing with sticks, he used his finger, cocking his thumb like a regular gangster.

  Aunt Grace blamed it on the picture shows. Naturally, she refused Timmy permission to attend, but with or without her say-so she was sure he snuck into the Capital on Saturday afternoons with his little pal Billy Wertz. It frightened her to speculate on the sights he saw therein. If it wasn’t James Cagney shooting up the town, it was Boris Karloff robbing graves or Bella Lugosi sucking blood. What kind of example did that set the nation’s youth? Certainly not the kind found in the Good Book. At least when God ripped Jezebel into a thousand parts the better to be, consumed by wild boars, He provided young people with a cautionary tale of sound moral instruction.

  Things came to a head the day Timmy blew up the tool shed in a chemistry experiment gone bad. He spent the next two weeks tied to the verandah by a rope. If the Rutherfords thought this punishment would curtail the mortification he caused them, they were mistaken. Passersby watched as the Wichita kid stood at the lip of the top step and practised long-distance spitting, self-induced belching, and the host of other skills with which little boys endear themselves.

  Small wonder that Aunt Grace was suspicious of his desire to attend the upcoming revival. She knew all about the Tent of the Holy Redemption Tour. Run by a pair of American evangelicals, it breezed through town each fall before heading south to overwinter in the Florida panhandle. Folks praised the preaching of Brother Percy Brubacher and the charm of his partner, Brother Floyd Cruickshank, but the good reverends weren’t what drew the crowds, not in a month of Sundays.

  Aunt Grace sucked her teeth. “Timothy Beeford, don’t tell tales. You’ve no intention of finding Jesus. What you really want is to get inside that tent. That tent with its history of horrors.”

  “All right, okay,” Timmy confessed. “So can I? Please? I’ll be good for a whole week. I promise.”

  Timmy’d heard about the tent the previous Saturday after seeing The Mummy with Billy Wertz. They arrived back at Billy’s to find an impromptu party in full swing. Mr. Wertz and a few of his friends, big hairy men like himself, were hunkered in a circle out back, while their wives were indoors exchanging cookie recipes. The way the men snickered, Timmy figured they were drunk.

  Billy set him straight. “Us Pentecostals don’t drink. We just have apple cider.”

  A whoop from the men. Cries of “kaboom, kaboom.”

  “What’re they talking about?” Timmy asked.

  “The revival tour. It’s coming next week.”

  Timmy looked puzzled.

  “You know, the tour, the tent?”

  Timmy still looked puzzled.

  Billy rolled his eyes. “Daddy,” he called out, “tell Timmy about the Tent of the Holy Redemption!”

  The men blinked, then let out a collective guffaw. “Go on, Tom. Tell the kid. Make a man of him.”

  Mr. Wertz cocked his head at Timmy. “If I tell, promise you won’t let on to your Aunt Grace?”

  Timmy could hardly breathe: If this was a grownups’ secret, it must be important. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” He plunked himself cross-legged at the foot of the oracle.

  “All right then.” Mr. Wertz took a glug of apple cider and leaned forward. “Next week, a couple of preachers are coming to town with the Tent of the Holy Redemption. But before the reverends got their hands on it, it wasn’t a revival tent, see? It was a den of iniquity. Belonged to the Bennetts, rich folks from Pittsburgh, made their money in coal.”

  “Robber barons,” interrupted the man on Mr. Wertz’s right. Timmy pictured a family in Zorro masks sitting on shiny black thrones.

  “Robber barons is right,” Mr. Wertz said. “Now these Bennetts, these robber barons, they had themselves an estate near Hornets Ridge, a village ’bout a slingshot east of Mount Pawtuckaway, off in the Merrimack Valley of New Hampshire. And they’d get their richy-rich pals to come up by sleeper train to join ’em on pleasure trips. By day, they’d hunt. By night, they’d party in the tent. Stuff themselves sick on game, French pastries, and booze. Oh, yes! And dance to jazz bands bused in from New York!”

  “Never mind about that,” the man said. “Get to the good part.”

  “I’m getting there, I’m getting there,” said Mr. Wertz. He had another glug of cider. “Now the Bennetts had this son by the name of Junior. The worst of a bad lot. He had slick hair, silk ascots, and wiggled his eyebrows at every gal in the county.”

  A chorus of hoots: “A walking erection!”

  �
�Doubled the town birthrate!”

  “Wore out the back-seat springs on his daddy’s Hudsons!”

  “At least he was good for something!” said a man to the left.

  “Who’s telling the story?” Mr. Wertz demanded.

  “You, Tom, you,” the men cackled.

  “Right, so anyways, this Junior, he finally bites off more than he can chew. Starts making time with Nellie Burns, wife of the sheriff’s deputy, Reggie. Reggie gets wind of the hanky-panky. Late one night, he grabs his shotgun and heads to the Bennett tent. There he finds his wife and Junior naked as jay birds ’cept for their party hats. What happened next wasn’t pretty.”

  The men fell silent. Timmy’s eyeballs were out of their sockets.

  “‘The wages of sin is death,’” the man on the left observed.

  “Amen,” said Mr. Wertz. “That’s Brother Percy’s very text. Adultery happened in that tent, lad. A double murder-suicide to boot. To this very day, you can see the holes where the lovebirds had their skulls blasted through to Kingdom Come. And if you look real hard, you can even see some brains.”

  Timmy nagged his Aunt Grace for days. He nagged his Uncle Albert too. “I gotta see inside the tent. I just gotta.” The couple discussed their nephew’s request into the wee hours. Aunt Grace was inclined to say no. As a Presbyterian, she found the idea of tent evangelists embarrassing. “Too much singing, clapping, and general mayhem, not to mention those tambourines.”

  But as Uncle Albert pointed out, the Wertzes were pretty respectable for Pentecostals. “Maybe our Timmy could learn something from a God-fearing sermon on the wages of sin.”

  Aunt Grace counted to ten; Albert gave in to everyone, except her. She wrung a concession. “We’ll give you our blessing,” she told the boy, “providing Mrs. Wertz promises you’ll be home for tuck-in by nine o’clock.”

  Billy and his mother arrived at five to collect Timmy for the twenty-block walk to the fairgrounds; Mr. Wertz had gone ahead to help raise the tent. Before the revival, they planned to meet up with other families from Bethel Gospel Hall for a potluck picnic; then, after the testifying, to have Timmy home by nine as promised. Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace were waiting with Timmy on the verandah, Uncle Albert clutching the family Bible, Aunt Grace cradling a container of her special potato salad.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Mrs. Wertz hollered from the street.

  Aunt Grace smiled primly. Pentecostals could carry on like pig-callers in a barnyard, but Presbyterians knew better than to make a ruckus. “Why, Betty,” she said when Mrs. Wertz was within speaking distance, “aren’t you looking festive.” This was in recognition of Mrs. Wertz’s pleated navy dress and string of imitation pearls. For herself, Aunt Grace wore only black on the Sabbath — as Christ had died for her sins, it was the least she could do — but she understood that in fashion, as in most other things, Pentecostals had their own notion of the appropriate. Ah well, who was she to judge? God would let Pentecostals know what was what in the fullness of time, and in any case it wasn’t as if she had to invite Betty Wertz inside.

  Mrs. Wertz showed off the frock with a spin. “Thanks muchly. It’s nearly new from my sister Bess, out Ingersoll way. Lucky for me, she’s been enjoying her suppers of late. Heavens, I wish I could put on some flesh, but there you are.”

  “And here you are,” said Aunt Grace, presenting Mrs. Wertz with her special potato salad before the conversation could descend to body talk.

  “You shouldn’t have,” Mrs. Wertz replied, packing it next to the bologna sandwiches and celery sticks in her picnic basket.

  “No trouble,” Aunt Grace allowed. “I make it with olives and pimentos, you know. With a speck of pepper for zest.” Aware of a wriggling at her side, she glanced at Timmy, and faced an unspeakable horror. “Timothy! Get your hands out of your pants!”

  “But my nuts itch.”

  “Timothy!”

  “Well, they do!”

  Aunt Grace gave him two quick spanks. “That’s for scratching. And that’s for sass.” She pivoted back to Mrs. Wertz, red as a beet. “If Timothy gets himself into any mischief, give him a good smack. It’s the one thing he understands.” Timmy made a face. Aunt Grace grabbed him by the ear. “If we hear of any hijinks, there’ll be more where this came from.” With that she gave Timmy a third and final spank that sent the lad scooting down the verandah steps.

  “I’m sure he’ll be just fine,” Mrs. Wertz said, as the boys ran laughing in circles to the street, the picnic basket swinging between them.

  The Tent of the Holy Redemption was a forty-by-sixty-foot blue-and-white monster. Timmy fell silent the moment it came into view. As he approached, all he could think was: “Once upon a time, a man was naked in that tent. With a woman. And now they’re dead. And in Hell. Both of them. Together. I wonder if they’re still naked?”

  “Hi there.” It was Mr. Wertz, fresh from securing the last support. He gave Mrs. Wertz a sweaty bear hug and she didn’t even mind. Timmy bet they did things that would make his Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace drop dead of a heart attack.

  Mr. Wertz turned to the youngsters. “What would you kids say to a tour?” The boys were in heaven.

  Their first port of call was the portable generator and trailer-truck at the rear. The truck was bright enough for a carnival caravan, covered in colourful curlicues, squiggles, and capital letters. “She’s quite the beast, eh?” Mr. Wertz enthused. “Everything you see — tent, poles, generator, the whole shebang — folds up and fits inside.”

  “Are those the eyes of God?” Timmy asked, pointing at the trailer wall. Circling the command PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD were a dozen gigantic bloodshot eyes, more scary, all-seeing, and all-knowing than even the eyes of his Aunt Grace, who claimed to have an extra set in the back of her head.

  “Sure thing,” said Mr. Wertz. He gave them a knowing wink: “So what do you want to see next?”

  “Blood, blood!” Timmy squealed.

  Mr. Wertz tousled the little ghoul’s hair and threw him in the air. “You got it.” He trooped his charges up front, lifted the tent flap, and hustled them into the sanctuary of horrors. Ahead stretched a wide centre aisle, flanked by twenty rows of benches and chairs, which led to a platform with a pulpit on its left and a piano on its right. Above the stage, shards of light entered where brains had once been blasted out.

  Timmy was beside himself. He imagined naked people running back and forth, dodging bullets like mechanical ducks in a penny arcade. Bang! Bang! AAAH!!! Bang! Bang! AAAH!!!

  What he loved most were the gore stains radiating from each hole. Ten years of rain and sun had failed to wash, weather, or bleach them away, as if God had decreed the tent’s taints would never fade, but remain an eternal warning to sinners. (Brother Floyd prized this effect, which made worthwhile his periodic efforts with slaughterhouse guts and a paintbrush.)

  Outside, Mrs. Wertz and the women were calling the menfolk to supper. Timmy made a beeline for the food lineup, appetite whetted no end. What a spread! The fairground tables bowed under a weight of roast and boiled meats, fresh vegetables, salads, sandwiches, and pies of every description.

  Timmy was a prize piglet, even gobbling a scoop of his aunt’s potato salad, except for the olive bits. These he stored in his pants pockets, where he hoped they’d dry into ammunition for his peashooter.

  “You’re like a little oinker fattening up for slaughter,” Mr. Wertz said, laughing. How he’d regret those words, wish to gobble them back as surely as Timmy did butter tarts. For if the Wichita kid was as stuffed as a mounted deer head, within two hours he’d be as dead.

  God’s Judgment

  Eyewitness reports of the tragedy were as varied as the Gospels. Nonbelievers, outside the tent, focused on the explosion of the generator, and the sight of the eyes of God, ripped from the side of the trailer, whirling in a metallic ring of fire into the heavens. Believers within recounted visitations by the beasts of Revelation, and of electrical wires transformed to the snake of Eden spitti
ng fire as they whipped and darted in demonic pursuit of sinners.

  Most famous within this apocalyptic tradition was the account of Mr. Bud Smith, featured in the Stratford Beacon Herald. Mr. Smith declared that the Pit of Hell had opened up to the right of his lawn chair, releasing a Satanic legion of armed skeletons that he’d single-handedly dispatched with the aid of his cane. The Herald declined to report that old age had been bringing the grizzled ancient similar visions on a more or less weekly basis.

  Most widely circulated, however, was the version of Mrs. Betty Wertz, written for King Features Syndicate by then cub reporter K.O. Doyle.

  I SAW TIMMY BEEFORD DIE

  by Mrs. Betty Wertz

  As told to Mr. K.O. Doyle

  It was a terrible night, the night Timmy Beeford died. Died, dead, in the Tent of the Holy Redemption!

  Under the big top, the air was so hot you could bake muffins. And so high you’d swear the Bennett brains were fresh from yesterday.

  Worst of all, the service was late. According to Brother Floyd Cruickshank, his partner Brother Percy Brubacher had been detained by the Lord. “That’s all very well,” said I to my Tom, “but it means we’re left suffocating in an abattoir.”

  Brother Floyd could see the flock was restless. He urged a singalong. So me, Tom, and the rest of the Bethel gospel choir took to the stage with our song sheets.

  No sooner had we launched into “Power in the Blood,” than a snap storm hit. Thunder and lightning to beat the band, building to the third chorus, when out of nowhere Brother Percy staggered up the aisle, soaking wet, hollering in tongues.

  We have the like at church each Sunday, hands heavenward, palms up, but never before the invocation. The sounds lit the crowd like a brusher, tongue-speaking blazing through the tent. It was as if we’d been beset by demons.