"Moore, Lad - The Final Scorning Of Reba Nell Bixby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Lad)

The Final Scorning of Reba Nell Bixby
by Lad Moore
* * * * *
It would be a cold day in the storied caves of Hades before anyone got any better at it than Odie Dodie. When he flashed that smile and touched their hand, long-malnourished moths escaped from tightly clasped wallets. He sold what everybody wanted -- God's eternal love and forgiveness -- the always special-of-the-day.
* * * * *
The big tent was coming down and the audience had dispersed into what had been the midway of the Barnes and Short Circus. It was the high time of their evening -- having enjoyed a good performance and witnessed some of the best trapeze and animal acts anywhere on tour. Kids were still tugging at skirts, trying to get mama's attention to relate for the fourth time what they had seen high in the air. Old men were explaining to young boys that the lions of David Cooper were dangerous and unpredictable -- that he was able to control them only because he had them perched on stools above the ground.
"Lions will not attack from an elevated place," the old man was saying to the freckled-face boy in a cowboy suit, "it's their nature to crouch and spring upward -- and the elevated platform stymies them. "But tigers -- now that's a different story." His voice trailed off, the boy looking up at him, clinging fast to every word. His candy apple had left a four-inch crimson circle that highlighted his pearly teeth, with mouth hung open and eager for more explanation of what he had seen in the three sawdust rings.
The crowd on this Tuesday night was thus primed for Ted LeMasters, a.k.a. show name Odie Dodie.
Odie hosted the huckster pavilion. It was the final island of light on the show grounds, the last piece of circus before all dreams melted away in the parking lot. People would naturally linger there, not wanting to walk past it so briskly as to leave the excitement and thrill of the evening. It was the final bit of insulation that kept the awe of the glittering circus alive -- masking the realities that would begin again when the key slipped into the door of the bland family sedan for the trip home.
Odie knew that. He knew people savored the last of the circus like a tiny shard of dissolving hard candy -- not wanting to crunch down on the sliver and end it all.
He practiced and performed his art to perfection. His tent housed collections of cheap wristwatches, jewelry, cameras, and the crowd-favorite -- earpiece transistor radios disguised as sunglasses, fresh from the rice fields of Malaysia.
It was one man theatre. He began with jokes, then loud stories that were a parody of the circus performance they had seen, laced with humor that mocked, but never contradicted the skill and talent of the performers.
"Clyde the sword-swallower would've taken in the sword handle too, but he had already eaten supper."
"Bet you thought David Cooper had those cats under control, leaping through those rings of fire and all. He learned to do all those tricks first himself -- but most of us are married too, so we understand."
The laughter rose and fell from Odie's tent as the rest of the circus hurriedly tore everything down and packed it away. In less than two hours, what once had looked like a shiny sparkling city would be gone. Left would be trailers and trucks, poised to snake their silvery stream away at the first light of morning. Before the dew would melt away, the circus lot would be empty -- with only the litter of snow cone and cotton candy funnels to testify that it happened at all.
In that two hours, Odie's job was to lighten wallets and purses one more time. He would keep them captive, gaining their confidence as he pitched his worthless trinkets. The profit of the junk that he sold was secondary to his well-honed ability to shortchange his customers. Some would count their change twice, then push it deep into their jeans, satisfied that it was correct. Some wouldn't count it at all, distracted by the continuous litany of tomfoolery he cast before them.
Odie's con was one of the best on the show, and he had to give a third of it to Titus Short, the owner. He resented that, and always lied about the take. But old man Short was no fool. He knew what the night should average, and he counted and controlled Odie's inventory of junk. It was difficult to screw the old man, it really was. But sharing was not one of Odie's proudest habits, and he calculated ways to avoid it.
Odie spent many restless night trying to develop an angle that would better capitalize on his talents. The world was a fresh pearled-oyster, always eager to separate themselves from their wages. Con-artistry was nothing more than confirming what people really wanted to believe anyway. It was just a matter of getting past the skepticism that was natural to people who had been fleeced before.
This was Odie's real talent. He could evoke trust from even the farmers' wives -- the most leery of them all -- the bastion of the doubters. Many times he caressed their calluses as he palmed a dollar from their change on its way back into those tightly held purses with the snapping-turtle clasps. It was all in the eyes. When Odie held eye contact with Mrs. Farmer Brown, he looked into the depths of her soul. Out poured the yearning for his brand of softness and his reassuring voice. There was the predicted meltdown -- every single time.
Odie would say that they were the loneliest women on the planet -- the milkmaids and lye-soap handlers of rural America. They defined a good day as one when the postman brought a new Sears Catalogue.
Then he would add, "they just love me -- not sexually, although if I had more time -- but like a father, or maybe like a preacher -- someone who can read the tea leaves that pool in the tears in their eyes." His words weren't brags -- they were self-assured and confident expressions of what he believed about himself.
And he was right. Yes, Odie was very good at what he did.
It came to him one night when he was packing up -- when the widow of a farmer came back to his tent in tears. He thought -- God, she counted her change again, or the face has already fallen off the watch.
But it wasn't that at all. She came back to clutch his hand for a moment and say "God bless you man, you remind me so of my most dearly-departed Buck."
Thus it came to him -- at precisely that moment -- the pearl in his oyster was to become a man of God.
* * * * *
Odie met Miss Reba Nell Bixby at a truck stop in a little red mud hole called Marshall, Texas. There was something about her countenance, the look on her face that whispered of angelic qualities. Her yellow hair and her natural beauty shone through the roadhouse makeup and black cobweb hairnet as she plopped the plate of eggs and pancakes in front of him. He flashed his famous smile at her the two times she refilled his coffee, and he noted her fascination with the big truck outside that said, "Rev. Odie McClean's Rock of Ages Tabernacle."
"You Reverend McClean?"
"That I am, Miss, saver of sinners and doin' the Lord's work at the rate of seven days and nights a week."
She sat down in the booth beside him, peering over it as if she wanted the comfort of that barrier between them. Between customers, she would return and fill his coffee cup again, the signal for him to stay. Each time she looked out at the truck in longing stares.
"Where you headin' next?" She asked.
"God's plans take me from here through ten stops in Texas, then into Arkansas, where the heathens are already puttin' up roadblocks agin' the Lord," he said.
She smiled a smile that married listlessness with awe.
Before he left Alex's Hot Potato Grill, Odie had consumed a short stack, two over easy, two quarts of coffee, and all of Miss Reba Nell Bixby.
They packed her things in one small suitcase -- everything else in her tiny room belonged to the boarding house. They left out the back way, closing the screen door carefully so it wouldn't clap their departure.
She sat silently in the passenger seat, watching the sunrise behind her, as the town the Chamber of Commerce billed as the City of Seven Hills disappeared in the mirror.
"I hated Marshall," she said, breaking the nervous tension in the truck. "It 's a one trick pony. Nothing here for me. Alex's Grill might as well have been the headliner -- that and the Lions Loonies talent show. And don't be fooled by the big sign -- there ain't no seven hills, unless they're advertising their godawful fire ant mounds."
They passed through Carthage and turned west toward Tenaha, with Odie busily mapping out the routines of the Tabernacle, and Miss Reba's expected role in the services.
"You will learn the tambourine the first couple of nights, but we only have about ten songs in the whole deal," he explained. "I sing, you twist and chank."
They had a two-day stand in Tenaha. Odie said this part of Texas was neglected.
"Big revivalists don't mess too much with farm towns. They want to go to where there is a civic center or at least they can fill the high school gym and sleep over at a Best Western. But I learned that them alfalfa and corn-crop offerings can get pretty sizeable. Lots of farm folk have read the scriptures and you can lead them quickly to that wonderful ten-percent number."
Both nights were standing room only, and Miss Reba learned the ropes quickly. She handled the tambourine with her hip nicely, but mastered the gold-painted slop jar even better -- Odie's offering plate of choice. At the end of the second night, they counted the money in the light of the Coleman lantern. Odie showed her what he meant. In the slop jar was one particular offering -- a roll of bills wrapped tightly with a green rubber band -- like the one that comes with the newspaper. He unwound the bills and counted them. The rubber band held three hundred and forty-two dollars, in mostly twenties and tens.
"Two years worth of mama's milk money," said Odie. "Paying off all the family sins in one bite."
"And we're talking about sins like gossiping, and young Caleb taking the Lord's name in vain when he came down real hard on his thumb with a ball-peen hammer. We ain't talking about any real sins here -- no cheatin' and no thievery, and none of that Louisiana riverboat gambling."
"Law -- what would she have given me if there had been any real sinnin' going on -- you know, lustin'-after, and gallopin' between the bedsheets? Wooo -- give me a couple of Amen's to that possibility."
They became an effective team, yet maintained their professional distance despite Odie's mouth-watering glimpses of her when they changed into their service robes, and the couple of times he looked down her draping neckline when she bent over. She kept herself cold and aloof, steering their conversations always to the mundane, not allowing a drift to either the left or the right.
Hands-off is better, Odie thought. He was glad of it the two times he had to pinch her ear -- to keep her from coming a little too close to taking up preaching herself. She had caught on a little too well in some ways, and there was only room in the kitchen for one cook.
They played Calvert, Texas for three days. The cotton crop was in, and the word at the Phillips '66 where they stopped for gas spoke of a bumper crop and good cotton prices.
The first night was what Odie called a Texas Leaguer. They had a crowd that filled the tent two hours early, then fanned out in a circle that stretched to the edge of the VFW property. People sat on the ground on quilts, with picnic baskets and coolers of pop for the youngsters.
Odie had them greased by dusk. They were clapping slow rhythm to "Our Lord of Hosts," and stood straight up when he sang 'Onward Christian Soldiers." Miss Reba mingled in the crowd three times, to quench their thirst to repent with folding money.