Billy Sunday kept on preaching to a mesmerized crowd: “I suppose some of you may wince at the plainness with which I speak, but remember, it costs me severe pangs of regret to be compelled to do it.” He grabbed hold of the chair, pointed it backward, and straddled the seat. “You don’t thrash the devil with highfalutin words.”
Stanley and Evan sat in the pew with their mouths hanging open. Neither one had ever seen the likes of Billy Sunday. Occasionally, the widow would glance at the boys, making sure Stanley in particular hadn’t had an attack of nerves with all the excitement. At one point he pulled on the widow’s sleeve and whispered, “This is even better than the minstrel show.”
“Boże. Boże,” was all she could manage as she looked at the boy in wonder.
“A-muse-ments.” Sunday stretched the word, but in a more reasoned tone this time. He leaned forward in his chair, striking a relaxed pose. “People say to me, Billy, what harm can come from a game of cards?” He smiled at his audience like a bulldog before it attacks. “Ever since the day that cards were invented,” Sunday shouted, “they have been the tools of the gambler!” He stood up and climbed onto the chair. “I say, if you have any cards in your home, you had better throw them in the fire or else throw your Bibles in the furnace! The two won’t mix!”
Many in the audience averted their eyes in shame.
“Oh, you need not gasp! I am handing it to you straight!” He took off his brown suit jacket, twirled it overhead, and threw it to the back of the platform. “There is no use having Bibles around your house if you are going to make a joke of His Word by playing Bridge. Every pack of cards is but another stepping stone to hell!” He jumped off the chair, walked to the edge of the stage, crouched down, and leaned over. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he directed his next words toward hell. “There’s a square-shooter in Scranton by the name of Billy Sunday, and he’s gunning for you, Devil.”
The crowd applauded, wept, and praised the Lord. Sunday mopped up his sweat and wrung out his handkerchief. He picked up an imaginary bat and hit an imaginary ball. Cheers rose from the benches. The evangelist smiled, and everyone clapped once more.
Stanley poked at the widow’s arms. “An out-of-the-park home run!” he yelled, and clapped his hand against his thigh.
The widow’s eyes darted to Myrtle and Mildred with their arms flung straight up in the air. She glanced about the tabernacle and noticed a similar spectacle repeating itself throughout the crowd. She’d never seen such behavior in a house of God.
“A-muse-ments!” he shouted for the third and final time. “The dance.” He grabbed his jacket before stepping behind the pulpit once more. “It’s a hugging match set to music.” He put the jacket on slowly, smoothed the lapels, and pounded his fist into the podium. “The dance is a sexual love feast!”
Startled by such vulgarity, the widow shifted uneasily, and noticed that many in the audience were doing the same.
“The church is honeycombed with the rottenness of society. Somebody has to come out and run the risk of incurring your displeasure.” He waited for everyone to settle, and continued, undeterred: “The lowest-down rascal in any community is a dancing Methodist!”
At that, Myrtle Evans stood up and hollered, “Hallelujah!” She grabbed her husband by the collar and yanked him up. “Nothing worse than a Methodist!” she shouted.
“Do you know,” Billy Sunday went on, “that three-fourths of all the girls who are ruined owe their downfall to dance? People say to me, Billy, but didn’t they dance in the Bible? Yes, they danced in the Bible.” He took a beat. “And they committed adultery too!” He pounded his fist again, headed to the front of the platform, and raised his hands to his mouth as a megaphone. “And they got punished!”
“That’s telling them, Billy!” Mayor Jermyn shouted. Then, remembering his position, he sat back in his seat.
“When you sow the theatre, you reap adulterers!”
Row after row stood and applauded.
“If you sow card games, you reap a bunch of gamblers. When you sow the dance, you reap a crop of brothels.”
Applause thundered throughout the tabernacle.
Billy Sunday waited a full minute for the audience to calm down. “And if you sow saloons, you reap a lot of puking drunkards.” He paused and smiled. “But that’s another sermon for another service.” He returned to the pulpit and closed his eyes. “Let us pray . . . Lord,” he yelled up to the rafters, “it’s me, Billy!”
Heads dipped in prayer, but most eyes stayed open to see what the evangelist had in store.
Sunday glanced across the audience. “I want to thank you for this throng before me.” He looked up with a beatific smile, as if he could see God Himself. “Help them this morning. Let them know that if they accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, they will be saved. Go over to Providence and Bull’s Head. Go to Green Ridge, Hyde Park, and every square foot of this valley. Don’t miss anybody, Jesus. Go downtown to the hotels and respectable businesses, but don’t forget to stop by the theatres and brothels. Save them all, Jesus. The policemen, the firemen, the fellows who deliver the mail. And the lawyers. Oh, Jesus, there’s a bunch that needs lots of help.” He grinned, and at least half the audience smiled back at him. Sunday pointed toward a dozen men sitting at the telegraph machines and telephone lines. “And the newspapers. Aren’t you proud of them, Lord?” He turned around. “And bless the singers sitting behind me.” He looked over at his musical director sitting by the piano. “How many churches, Rody?”
“Fifty-three,” Mr. Rodeheaver said.
“That’s right. Bless all fifty-three churches serving in this choir.” Sunday turned back around. “And the miners, Lord, especially the miners. They labor underground to supply our great nation with the anthracite that sustains us. Help all these fine people to know that there’s nobody but Jesus Christ who can save them. Inspire them to hit the sawdust trail this very day. Amen.”
The audience returned a rousing, “Amen!”
Mr. Ackley pulled his stool closer to the piano and began to play “Onward Christian Soldiers,” one of several hymns Sunday liked to use when he invited folks to come down front to be saved. People streamed out of their seats and into the aisles. The sawdust muffled the sound of their footsteps as they moved forward. The evangelist personally greeted each “trail hitter” with a welcoming smile and a glad handshake before directing him or her toward representatives from local churches. As Billy Sunday often said, “You can’t no more go to heaven without joining the church than you can go to England without crossing the ocean.”
Janet Paul, one of Sunday’s many assistants, sat next to him, counting in an even voice for the benefit of the pressmen. “Eighty-one souls saved, eighty-two, eighty-three, eighty-four souls saved . . .”
Stanley tugged on the widow’s sleeve. “I want to hit the trail!”
She looked around at the frenzied crowd pushing out of the pews. “I’m afraid you’ll get trampled,” she said.
“But I’m being called forward!”
She looked at him skeptically at first. “If you think so.” She smiled. “Mój drogi, I suppose it is all right. We all pray to the same God.” She stood up. “I’m going with you, though.”
“We’re already saved,” Myrtle said, as the two passed by. “No need for us to go up front.”
“At least I’ll be able to say I met Billy Sunday,” Stanley countered as he stepped into the aisle.
The widow puffed up as she glanced at Myrtle, who seemed to be considering his point.
“It’s not every day a fellow gets to meet a famous ballplayer,” the boy added.
The widow turned back to see if Myrtle had caught this last remark, before pushing Stanley forward in silence.
When Janet Paul called out her last count, “Two hundred and ninety-seven souls saved!” Sunday declared it to be a “goodly number.” Homer Rodeheaver picked up his trombone and played “Stand Up for Jesus,” signaling the ushers to take up the collection.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
OWEN TREKKED DOWNTOWN IN SEARCH OF A GIN MILL. He had wanted to do right by Grace, but Myrtle had a point. Seeing him, “today of all days,” would be too difficult, especially with the baby a month or so out. Better to stay away from her. Yet whenever he thought about Grace buying that tin of lye, he couldn’t help feeling she needed him. On one hand, Grace ought to know better than to put down lye this time of year. Then again, why should she know better? Wasn’t that a husband’s job? Shouldn’t he be there to spread lye, lift sacks of flour, and tend ashes? His place was with her. But she’d never take him back as long as he was drinking, and God as his witness, he needed to drink. This battle continued inside his head until he stopped in front of a speakeasy, a few blocks shy of the tabernacle.
As was the custom at such places, he headed around back and checked in all directions before knocking. A man on the other side of the door eyed Owen through a peephole and hollered out, “We’re not open on Sundays. It’s the law in this town!” Owen shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling the cold for the first time that day, and turned to leave. He glanced up at the graying sky, and took note of the snowflakes starting to fall around him.
“Look where you’re going!” a man shouted.
“Sorry,” Owen replied, stepping out of the way. “Didn’t see you coming.” He continued walking, then turned around. “I don’t suppose you’re going inside.”
“’Course not,” said the man, though he didn’t make an effort to leave. “It’s Sunday.” He pulled up the collar on his oversized coat, leaned against a post near the door, and started to roll a cigarette.
“Hey,” Owen said, looking at the man for the first time, a short guy, down on his luck if his disheveled appearance was any indication, with the ring finger missing on his left hand. “Don’t I know you?”
“Not likely.” He struck a match.
“Carl, from the cockfights, about twelve—no—more like fourteen years ago.”
Carl tipped his head up. “The fellow who wanted my piano for his girl,” he said. “Do you still have her?”
“The piano or the girl?”
“Either one.”
“I’ll tell you over a drink, if you really want to know.”
Carl continued leaning.
“First beer’s on me,” Owen added.
“You should’ve said so.” Carl crushed his cigarette with the toe of his boot and knocked on the back door. “I’m here about a horse,” he said to the man who opened the peephole.
“And him?”
“He’s with me. Tell Ferri I’ll vouch for him.” With that, the man inside slid the bolt and opened the door. Carl looked back at Owen. “I never would’ve made you out as a drinker. Just goes to show, you should never bet on the character of a man.”
“Why’s that?” Owen asked as they walked up to the barkeep.
“He’ll lose you money every time.”
* * *
Ushers put down new sawdust before the start of the two o’clock service; caretakers fed coal to each of the fifteen potbellied stoves. The women who’d sung in the choir that morning seated themselves in the congregation. Mr. Ackley intended to feature the men’s voices at the afternoon meeting, and the women’s later that evening. Betty Leas suggested that the ladies from the Providence Christian Church sit together in the pews she’d asked Pearl Williams to save for them. Most abided—though, understandably, a few chose to sit elsewhere with their families.
The crowd at the tabernacle quadrupled to eight thousand by the time Rodeheaver stepped out to introduce a couple dozen new groups, including the members of local Eastern Star chapters and the Salvation Army. As with the first service, Rodeheaver worked up the crowd, but this time they knew to watch for Billy Sunday’s entrance during the singing.
And the evangelist did not disappoint. He strutted out onstage during the last verse of “I’m Bound for the Promised Land,” carrying a signed baseball bat, a gift from the Scranton Miners ball club. He took a couple of swings and jumped right into his sermon: “They tell me a revival is only temporary.” He swung a few more times, stood the bat upright, and leaned into it. “So is a bath,” he finally said, “but it does you good.” He laughed easily, and everyone in the audience applauded.
Sunday’s second sermon of the day focused on backsliders. He spoke of careless Christians and serious ones who, in the end, weren’t serious enough. He told stories of heathen women, adulterous men, and somehow managed to work around to a king named Cyrus who tried to bribe a beautiful woman named Panathea to join his harem. When she refused to dishonor her husband, the king sent him into battle. According to Sunday, whose tone turned sentimental, Panathea knew what this meant. He shook his head, indicating no good could come. “She waited while the battle raged, and when the field was cleared she screamed her husband’s name and finally found him wounded and dying. She kneeled,” Sunday dropped to the floor, “and clasped him in her arms.” He hugged his own body, rocking back and forth. “And as they kissed,” he looked up with tear-filled eyes, “his lamp of life went out forever.”
Moans rippled throughout the tabernacle.
Sunday stood up and dusted himself off before finishing the story. “King Cyrus heard of the man’s death and went to the field. Panathea saw him coming, careening on his camel like a ship in a storm. She called, Oh, husband! He comes.” Sunday glanced at the floor as if addressing a body at his feet. “He shall not have me. I was true to you in life, and will be true to you in death. And she drew her dead husband’s poniard from its sheath,” he grabbed the baseball bat from the pulpit and held it like a knife, “drove it into her own breast, and fell dead across the body. King Cyrus came up and dismounted. He removed his turban, kneeled by the dead husband and wife, and thanked God that he had found in his kingdom one true and virtuous woman that his money could not buy nor his power intimidate.”
Some in the audience wept. Everyone leaned forward, waiting for the message in this emotional illustration.
Sunday concluded, “The problem of this century is the problem of the first century. We must win the world for God.” He pounded the bat against the pulpit. “And we will win just as soon as we have men and women who will be faithful to God and not sell out to the devil.”
Applause broke out in the congregation, compelling people to hit the trail, some for the second time that day. Toward the end, Midge Howells, a well-known motorman on the Green Ridge line who’d attended the first service, entered the tabernacle. He’d stopped his streetcar filled with passengers out on North Washington Avenue, long enough to come inside and walk down front.
“My only regret,” he said to Billy Sunday, who extended the glad hand of faith, “is that I didn’t come forward this morning.”
* * *
After a late lunch, Grace lumbered over to the couch with both hands pressed into her lower back. “Just let me rest my eyes for a few minutes,” she said to Violet, who followed her into the parlor from the kitchen. Grace brought one hand around and rubbed her belly. “Carrying this sort of a load wears on a person.” She smiled as she stretched out on the cushions and closed her eyes.
“What are you waiting for?” Grief asked, balancing on the arm of the sofa.
“All in good time,” Grace murmured.
Violet watched from a chair, but said nothing. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
“What is it you have in mind? Surely, you can tell me now.” Grief reached for her thigh but tumbled forward, catching himself on the gate-leg table. He stood, smoothed his soiled shirt, and limped over to the doorway. “Hand me the lye. I’ll stop this foolishness,” he said, glaring at Violet, “once and for all!”
“Not another word out of you,” Grace shot back, her eyes still closed.
“Pardon?” Violet lean
ed forward.
“I’ll tell you what you can do for me.”
Violet jumped up. “Anything.”
“Anything,” Grief mimicked from across the room.
“Play Mother a song on the piano.”
Panic flooded Violet’s face as she dropped back into the chair. Her hands gripped its wooden arms, fingernails digging into the varnish. Her breath stuck like a stone in her throat. She hadn’t touched the keys since she’d played for the three days Daisy lay dying.
“Make it something joyful,” Grace said, either unaware or in spite of her daughter’s torment. “Today is a special day.”
Grief stepped in front of Violet and looked into her eyes. “A last hurrah, perhaps?” he cackled as he turned toward Grace.
“Not another word,” she said. “I mean it.”
Violet shuddered.
“Did I ever teach you the sparrow song?” Grace started humming.
Violet remained bolted to her chair, too frightened to move.
Grace sang the chorus in a quiet voice.
I sing because I’m happy
I sing because I’m free
His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches me . . .
Grief slapped his palms together. “Lovely,” he said, “just lovely.” He stood over Grace, breathing heavily as she sang the first verse.
Why should I be discouraged
And why should the shadows fall . . .
She held the last note, and opened her eyes to look at Violet. “I should have taught you that one,” she said. “It’s one of your father’s favorites.” She held up her hand and fingered the keys of an imaginary piano. “A light touch. A pianist should never overpower her singers. Remember that.”
Grief stroked Grace’s brow, laughing to himself. “She won’t have to remember for very long.”
Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night Page 22
