by John Rechy
He felt an assertive nudge; actually it was a shove—an elbow jabbed, hard, into his ribs. He turned to see the hefty black woman next to him. She adjusted her crown and burst into his song with one long note, which she held, trembling, at its peak, and then she shattered it into several, which cascaded about as she added her own words to his in a golden, beautiful voice vibrating throughout the hall:
Lord, I never seen the ocean,
Lord, I never touched the sky,
But I know if I keep trust in Jesus,
I’ll be able to touch His sky. …
It was her! Sister Matilda of the Golden Voice! The woman who years ago coaxed her out of hiding under her seat, the woman who had sung the song she had sung at the beauty pageant, the woman she had sought when Eulah had dragged her into this very hall. She was back! Sylvia stared at her in awe. Her hair had stayed dark—almost. She was heavier, but she conveyed the same remembered grandeur. Seeing the woman from the remembered past, and looking out at the writhing hands before her in the audience, Sylvia shook her head and looked out into the squirming, screaming audience, trying to locate herself.
Smiling at his mother, Lyle repeated the black woman’s adjustments to his song, while she interjected, “Hmmmmm, Lord, hmmmmmm,” her dulcet sound gliding like a blue bird over his singing. Lyle felt bold, great, began another stanza:
Moving on, I’ll be able to look up, and—
Too soon for another stanza. He disguised his hesitation with notes on the guitar. Shaking her head in reproval of the notes soured by anxiety, the black woman sent her voice climbing, held it aloft over everyone in the auditorium, then let it descend, surrendering sweetly to his voice, then joining it as they moved together.
The chorus took up their rhythm, clapping, swaying: “Hmmmm-hmmmmm, uh-ummmmmmm.”
Then Sister Matilda abandoned him, right there on the stage. She stood aside with her arms crossed, challenging him—testing him—to go on by himself.
Lyle started, restarted, felt himself sweating anxiously, words disappearing from his mind. Okay! He’d sing the song Clarita had taught him, in Spanish, the song he’d serenaded Sylvia with.
Estás son las mañanitas,
que cantava el Rey David. …
Clarita wouldn’t like this, but there were quite a few Hispanics in the crowd of protestantes. He heard them echo:
A las muchachas bonitas,
Se las cantava el así.…
“Hallelujah!” Excitement rippled. “He’s singing in tongues. …” “Singin’ in tongues!”
When she heard the serenader’s song Lyle had sung at her window, Sylvia leaned back, assuming the sexy pose she had first assumed that damning morning before it had all turned chaotic; and at that moment she thought: What the hell am I doing here with all these crazies?
Now what? Lyle wondered, feeling hot. No more words would come to him. He strummed the guitar, pulled cords, waited for inspiration.
He began to sway his body—and then he hopped back, back, forward, forward—just like he had seen Brother Bud do earlier—but not exactly like that; his body let go, releasing tension, converting tension into a bounteous vigor. As he took the strutty imitated steps back and forth, forth and back, hopscotching, his dance altered, his body swayed, his hips gyrated and ground, thrusting forth and back, back and forth. Where had he learned to dance like this? From whom? When?
From Rose!
“Lord, have mercy!” cried Sister Sis, her tambourine jiggling, her flouncy ruffles fluttering like butterflies. “The spirit has groped this boy for sure, darned if it hasn’t!”
Brother Bud hopped about—with increasing difficulty—as the chorus hummed and the congregation praised the Lord. One man threw away his crutches and leapt about.
In surprise, Lyle felt himself becoming aroused because damn if Rose wasn’t at it again. (Do it from the hips, cowboy, yeah, yip-pee-yay!—and now back and forth!) He followed her instructions, arched his body and pushed forth, then back (now out, but not entirely out, so you can come back in smooth). He stomped up and down to calm his arousal, but, instead it grew, hardened, and he danced and twisted and lunged even more spiritedly. (Oh, yeah, cowboy, you got it, you got the rhythm just right, now thrust, thrust, thrust but don’t come yet, not yet! Who-a!) He thrust, and almost—
The congregation screamed and spun and shook and jumped and swayed and thrust in praise of the Lord and the Lord’s Cowboy.
2
The origin of the preacher-strut, according to the angels, Sister Sis, and Brother Bud. A guarded warning from Sister Matilda of the Golden Voice.
Still bewildered by herself—had she been in some demon’s trance, encouraged by Eulah’s agitated ghost?—Sylvia Love left the auditorium with as much dignity as she could muster—after Lyle’s extended performance had generated a chorus of loud hallelujahs.
And applause!
Startled by the applause and the praise-God’s he had received—including from both Brother Bud and Sister Sis—Lyle scouted the auditorium for a back exit. He saw one and headed for it, quick. The black woman with the crown intercepted him, linked her arm through his, and guided him firmly to a more secluded back part of the hall. Whiterobed angels drifted by, with halos propped on wire hangers.
“I am Sister Matilda of the Golden Voice,” the woman announced, adjusting her crown to allow no possible rebuttal. “What is your name, cowboy?”
“Lyle Clemens—and I’m not a cowboy, I’ve never even—”
Sister Matilda of the Golden Voice wiped away irrelevancies “Where’d ya learn to sing like that?”
“On my own,” Lyle said.
“In tongues?”
“Well—” He considered what to say; it wouldn’t be easy to lie to this imperious woman, and probably not wise to tell her about Rose’s instructions.
She didn’t give him a chance to. “Huh! Taught yourself how to sing!” she sniffed. “Shoot—that’s why it’s all wrong.”
“If it was all wrong, why the hell did everyone start singin’ and dancin’ and clapping like they did?” Lyle felt good enough to say—he had dissuaded Sylvia, and that had been his purpose.
“Partly because you were shakin’ your hips all around,” Sister Matilda said, “grindin’ and shovin’ like you were crazy, that’s why!”
Lyle turned his flushed face away from her.
“Don’t you turn blushing away from me!” she demanded. “Whatever brings righteous folks to the Lord is okay by me.”
If that’s what had happened, Rose had done it. “I didn’t do any of that for the Lord,” he said firmly. “I don’t even think about things like that.”
“What you say? You don’t think about the Lord! Shame on you!” She shook her head vigorously; some of the glitter flew off her crown. “You couldn’t’ve sung like that—bad as it was—without inspiration from the Lord, moving in mysterious ways. … You gonna deny you put lots of pain into your singing?”
He had put pain into his song; he felt it every day now.
Along came Brother Bud and Sister Sis.
Sister Matilda hurried her words. “You watch what you agree to, cowboy!”
No time for clarifying he wasn’t a cowboy. They were upon them.
“Boy, I tellya you got an act and a half,” said Sister Sis to Lyle, and poked him with her tambourine. She said dourly to Sister Matilda, “Now you ain’t filling this boy with all kinds of imaginings and nonsense, are you?” Her glare on Sister Matilda almost cracked the makeup.
Sister Matilda crossed her arms over her bosom—so vast that her arms rested there easily. “Now what kind of imaginings would you be suspecting me of, Sister Sis?”
“Now you know you are prone to some powerful imaginings, Sister Matilda.” Brother Bud tried to smile at her but did not succeed.
“Dear Sister Matilda, we wanna talk serious with this cowboy,” Sister Sis said. “So do you mind?” She gave her head a sideways jerk to emphasize her meaning. The blond wig did not budge.
> When Lyle had been on the stage with Sister Sis, she had seemed like an apparition, her features blurred by the heavy paint. Now that she stood near him, the impression increased that she was unreal. Under thick, black mascara, her eyes disappeared, lashes glued like bristles, the wig so blond and rigid it might have been frozen spun candy. Even her remarkable breasts appeared appended to her, as if flesh had been pushed up by the tight black belt she wore, her skirt flaring under it like a ruffled umbrella.
Brother Bud placed both his hands on Lyle’s shoulders. “We’d like to talk some business with you, cowboy.” His stare urged Sister Matilda away.
“I’m not a cowboy,” Lyle started. “I’ve never even been on a horse.”
“That so?” Brother Bud dismissed.
He was as unreal as Sister Sis—so gray he almost faded.
Sister Matilda said, “You go on now and talk with them, cowboy”—she paused—“and listen carefully to everything they tell you.”
The way she spoke that exhortation, slowly, emphatically, conveyed a further meaning, confirmed by the stabbing smiles the evangelists aimed at her.
“See ya, Sister Matilda of the Golden Voice,” Lyle said when the queenly presence walked away, her crown winking golden sparks.
Flanking him, the two evangelists led him along swiftly, down the corridors of the Pentecostal Hall.
A woman in an evangelical robe intercepted them. She held a small candy jar filled with jelly beans, black and orange. “Will this do for the—?” Catching sight of Lyle, she blocked further words.
“Gotta melt ’em first,” a man in a ministerial robe was joining them. He halted when he saw Lyle. “Evenin’, Sister Sis, evenin’, Brother Bud.” He and the woman retreated fast along the hallway as Brother Bud and Sister Sis menaced them with their glares.
Jelly beans? Melted? Lyle had no more time to wonder because he was soon marveling at the office Brother Bud and Sister Sis led him into.
It was large, opulent, with stuffed chairs with tassels, velvet drapes, a thick fluffy carpet that gleamed as if sequins had been woven into it. A Technicolor painting of Jesus in festive robes hung on a wall.
“That was some singing’ and dancin’, thrustin’ and grindin’ ya did for the Lord out there, cowboy,” Sister Sis congratulated.
“I’m not a cowboy, ma’am, never even—”
“Don’t matter!” Brother Bud insisted. “You look like one, and that’s what you are.”
“—and,” Lyle had continued, “I didn’t do that for the Lord. I did it to stop my—”
“Don’t matter why you thought you did it, cowboy, it’s what you did.” Brother Bud said. “Now you sit down and let’s talk.” He positioned himself beside his wife on a sofa that devoured them within its soft puffs. When Sister Sis smiled, only the makeup shifted, slightly. The man’s smile didn’t alter his face.
Lyle remained standing.
“You’ve found your way to the service of Our Lord,” Brother Bud said.
“Amen,” Sister Sis intoned.
Lyle shook his head, No.
“Can’t resist the Lord’s call,” Sister Sis warned. “The Lord has clearly sent you to help inaugurate our Write-a-Love-Letter-to-Jesus Campaign.”
“You want me to write a love letter to—?” Lyle shifted his guitar from one shoulder to the other, because everything was suddenly heavy. He sat down, not knowing what to do with his legs because his form, too, sank into the plush chair.
“My, my, you got some dandy long legs on you, don’t you?” Sister Sis approved. “That means you’ll walk long sturdy miles for Jesus.”
Brother Bud turned profoundly serious. “Son, that’s the name of our campaign, Write a Love Letter to Jesus. We’d like you to join that crusade—”
“—and get all those good folks roused up like you did tonight. For Jesus.” Sister Sis leaned toward him, as if to focus more closely on him through the heavy false eyelashes.
“We’re willing to make you a damn good offer, cause we’re sure of your mission, your callin’ from the Lord, sure you’ll draw lots of righteous souls,” Brother Bud said, “the way you had everybody movin’ and doin’.”
“Cause you sure got a lot of love to convey. “Sister Sis smothered a giggle and shook an imaginary tambourine. “Lordee, cowboy, did you strut!”
“Like a real warrior of the Lord!” Brother Bud approved. He asked gravely: “Cowboy, where do you think you learned the preacher-strut if not the Lord teachin’ you?”
“Preacher-strut?” When he had become aroused? Did Rose know that was called the preacher-strut?
To exemplify, Brother Bud hop-hopped, three back, two forward; he stumbled on the third.
“I just did what I saw you do. At first.” Lyle said.
“It was the Lord guiding your dance, cowboy, urging you to do the preacher-strut for the joy of his congregation,” Brother Bud exulted.
“The preacher-strut happens when angels fly over you and put you in the spirit,” Sister Sis said. “The only way to get close to them is to hop, hop, hop. That’s the preacher-strut.” Sister Sis shook the imaginary tambourine.
“It’s in Ezekiel, boy, you just read up in the Good Book.” Brother Bud was grave again. “You were receiving all kindsa messages from the Lord.”
Actually, from Rose—
“Now what do you say to the Lord’s offer?”
Lyle got up. He didn’t like this man or this woman who had goaded Sylvia into her weird frenzy. “I don’t believe I’m interested in your offer, but thank you a lot,” he said politely. “Now, please excuse me, Mr. Bud … Mrs. Sis.” Determined to be courteous, he bowed—and left, speeding away along the hall.
“Cowboy!”
“Sister Matilda!” She had been waiting for him.
Lyle heard hurried footsteps behind them.
Sister Matilda heard them, too.
Lyle looked back to see Sister Sis and Brother Bud, standing like two alerted soldiers watching him and Sister Matilda until she floated away, her crown blinking like gold dust within every wayward sparkle of light.
3
Sister Matilda meets Clarita and delivers a letter of further warning.
Looking out the window, Clarita saw a stout black woman stop before their house. She was elegant, too, wearing gloves and a hat. Was she admiring the vines that grew lushly, with tiny white buds—now that the spirit of Eulah Love had been plucked out of them?
No, the woman was checking out the address.
Who was she?
Of course, the woman Sylvia had told her about, who had sung with Lyle at that gathering of protestantes locos when Lyle’s song had forced some sense into her. The gall of her to come here! Clarita pulled the curtains closed, ready to pretend that no one was there ready to—
“There, in the window, I saw you. I have a letter to leave for the young man who lives here,” the woman called out.
What eyesight! Clarita was not about to retreat from a challenge. She went to the door, matching dignity with dignity. “Yes?”
“I’m Matilda of the Golden Voice.”
Clarita frosted her words, “I’m Clarita of the Smoky Eye.”
“Miz Clarita of the Smoky Eye, I have a letter here, an important letter, for that young man who sang with me at the revival meeting. I asked around and got this address. It’s essential that he get it.”
“If he’s exposed to trouble,” Clarita measured her words, “I’ll protect him, Señora Matilda.”
“Please give it to him—after you’ve read it, since I know you will—”
“I do not read correspondence that is not addressed to me.”
“Good.” Sister Matilda marched away.
Clarita tore open the envelope and read:
Cowboy, you must speak to me if you are considering the offer made by two people we both know. Come to the Texas Grand Hotel to discuss this. Bring your guitar—I believe you may have some talent, and I just might want to encourage it. Sister Matilda of the Golden Vo
ice.
Clarita was holding the letter when Lyle walked in. “A love letter, Clarita? Is that what you’re hidin’? I bet you get a lot of those.” Lyle had come home from school, to eat; he often did. Sylvia had stopped joining, claiming her lunch hour had been cut and she didn’t have the time to walk the few blocks required. Lyle knew the real reason; they would have detected the scent of the liquor she now drank at work.
“I do get many love letters, but this one happens to be for you.” Clarita pushed the letter at him.
Lyle wasn’t surprised to see that it had been opened. Clarita opened everything—closed doors, letters, closets, cans of food if she hadn’t purchased them herself, sniffing at them to approve or not. He read the note.
“Going?” Clarita demanded, her voice overflowing with a signal of betrayal.
Lyle hugged her, understanding her rivalry. “There’s no one else I could ever love the way I love you, Clarita.”
She tried not to smile. “You’ve got the charm of the cowboy.”
“That goddamned son of a bitch?” Lyle said, not pleased by the comparison.
“Yes. You have his charm, God save you, may you not inherit his cruelty.”
“I won’t,” Lyle promised.
4
Another warning at the Texas Grand Hotel.
The Texas Grand Hotel was one of those hotels that lingered, refused to leave, wouldn’t surrender. They existed in small towns throughout Texas. They shared old Texan-Spanish architecture, usually, and, most often, a courtyard with a dry fountain, and a cactus garden. Its once-thick carpets revealed frayed patches, wounds from a time of grandeur.
Lyle looked about the familiar hotel, so imposing it was as if he was seeing it for the first time.
“Here to see Sister Matilda?” the old man at the desk said.
“Yes, sir,” Lyle said.
“Glad you brought your guitar ’cause she said if you didn’t, don’t let you up. She’s waitin’. Those bigwigs from the revival are stayin’ here, too,” the old man said proudly.
